It does seem to me that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons, a temperature of thine own. But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter’s! of creatures, how few vast as the whale!
“Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!” The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre. None mark the rotten zomby torso—also ignored by the host of sharks—sinking in the lee of the whale’s vast, obscuring bulk.
Though changed in hue, the whale carcase has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk, save of course, its head, the removal of which is a process to be described in coming chapters. The corpse is still colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale.
The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.
There’s a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral they most piously do pounce as zombies upon a defenseless babe whose mother lies rent and twitching. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free; free only is the zomby, that stinking thing, it is alone at a feast of one, for none will sup on him, and even rot, that devourer of all, I say, even rot has no taste for annihilated zomby flesh for a goodly length of time.
Fire is the thing for the undead, aye, the hot and purging flame. A fire would not suffice for whales, for the sea in its power denies all fire. No, the whale must be supped upon, for in this wide world we are all in turn both diners and dinner, whale and man alike.
Nor is this the end of yon whale. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log—Shoals, Rocks, and Breakers hereabouts; Beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There’s your law of precedents; there’s your utility of traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There’s orthodoxy!
Thus, while in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world. Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Hawes who believe in them.
Ahab's Log: Chapter
Infandous Deeds
Ahab’s Log: October 31, 1851
Miserable Ahab! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from thy God; prowling among the oceans like a vile burglar hastening to cross some ultimate gulf. So disordered, self-condemning is thy look, that were a policemen present, on the mere evidence of thy countenance wouldst thou be arrested and hung. To dangle from the yardarm may yet be thy fate!
Fedallah hast determined that the time is nigh and as I scratch out these words, he dost prepare arcane powders and secret liniments for this nefarious thing we needs must do. Ahab, thou craven, since taking leave of Nantucket hast thou known this task to be in the offing. Did not Fedallah tell thee of it ashore, and at thy very home? Did ye not drink then, aye, and drink to splinter thy own murderous whalebone leg? So drink now, thou craven, drink thy unmitigated dark rum; down thy laudanum draught and thereby screw up thy courage. Think not, old man, to emulate that dumb son of Priam and shirk thy duty to all humanity. Think on that, Ahab; aye, think on it well as thou swillest thy burning, bitter courage.
Fedallah may have the right of it, curse his blasted soul; there will not soon—mayhap never again—be a more be reliable time whereby the task that needs doing will be shielded midst the sound and fury of cutting-in yon parmacetti with its thunder of rattling tackle, and such shouted singing as can now be heard on deck. The failing zomby we have brought from Nantucket hisses weakly, writhing in its bonds as Fedallah prepares for its final harvest. There is yet some pulsating fungus to be mined from out this creature’s skull, though Fedallah hast deemed its usefulness to be at an end. Soon—long before another whale may be taken to provide such shielding tumult as is needed—there will be naught left to harvest. Most of the yeasty mushroom protrusion from out its brain hast long since been ground down to powder and found its way to Fedallah’s foul potion.
He hast made himself abundantly clear that were he or I to go without his bitter brew, then that dire fever wouldst rise up from out the spine and strangle what little humanity may yet remain to us, thereby ejecting both from this precarious balance we do maintain, teeteringly so, in Ahab’s case. Aye, and as if in divine conjunction, the ship now heels creakingly over nigh its bulwarks and springs back as the first blanket piece is jerked free.
The ship heels back to an even keel; the not-long-to-be-man moans in his laudanum slumber, lying there next to the festering undead corpse. Nay, he not a man, Ahab, for his fate was sealed long since, ere he had his way with those young girls—thy own niece among them!—whom he did murder and then partake of their flesh. Such Militia call a Shammy, or a Sham, I know not which, nor does it matter overmuch. This thing will soon have its vision fulfilled, and become that which it emulates. Think on that old man, and feel thy chill misgivings turn to heat, firing thy purpose!
How couldst Fedallah live so many centuries in this manner? He hast performed this grim procedure scores upon scores of times—nay, ten-score scores of times! Lookest thou there: Fedallah goes about his tasks with calm unconcern, blast him! and were he to whistle, though not surprising me, I would fain strike him out of spite alone! Fedallah deems it crucial I assist him, for he hast need of other hands and mine the only trusted hands about, and he also sayest Ahab will have need to know the trick of it.
By Moby Dick’s bald ballocks, Ahab!; screw up thy courage; aye, swillest more of it; thy laudanum draught shall begin to work its magic soon. That man moaning there, captive this long time; rememberest what he hast the guilt of! Mind an eye to thine own guilt, too, and the way in which this vile sinner’s sacrifice will assuage thy debt to those yet living. Rememberest that he is a zomby in truth though he is not yet undead. Recall those heinous deeds! Thine own niece, Ahab!
Once the fever and the Quickening hast done its preservational work, then must we sever that new-created thing at the torso, thereby disabling it, as was done to the one there expiring ere sailing upon this voyage. That heinous act Fedallah then did himself, deeming Ahab unready for the gruesome task. In this Ahab concurs, for had he included me then in that sacrificial ritual, Ahab wouldst have given entirely in to raving. Indeed, even now canst thou feel its claws scrabbling at thy mi
nd.
Once that vile human is transformed into a yet more vile thing and then transfixed, its foul sprouting head will provide the needed yeast for Fedallah’s potion, the evil brew that keepest Ahab from the spore that grows within, in the damp dark mushroomy hollows of thy body, where vile mycelium even now slithers slowly up thy spine to pound at the gateways of thy brain. Rememberest that, Ahab. Hold that uppermost in thy mind as ye swillest thy rum and the laudanum begins its numbing work.
The thumps of sharks against the hull make thee jump and engender a nervousness thou hast not felt since thou wore short pants as ship’s boy, lifetimes ago. Man thy inner capstan, Ahab, to thy marlingspike! and prepare to heave, for Fedallah hast this very moment gazed thy way and dost motion thee to attend him.
Oh! infandous deed! ‘Tis done. Fedalldah did harvest the last bit of coruscating fungus from ever-widening hole in the zomby’s skull. Supporting the veracity of Fedallah’s grim expertise, that creature did indeed expire and cease to cling to whatever animation it possessed when Fedallah scooped the last cheesy spoonful from out the thing’s skull. A true corpse now, the stinking thing was dumped to drift with the stripped, shark-battered bulk of the whale, both soon sinking, the zomby’s poison flesh—untasted by sharks—falling next to that vast skeletonized corpse of the Leviathan, both to drift down for hours to some benthic depth, dancing there in the abyss.
Fedallah didst produce his vial of black-tar laudanum then, and in short order the rapacious criminal wast fully unconscious, breathing his last breaths as human, and Ahab, after an additional draught for himself, was ready for his task. Fedallah pulled from out some secret pocket another, smaller vial, containing what he named spores, a sort of fungal seed, saying it was dearly bought and worth the coffers of all kings, the living, the dead, and those yet to come. With wry glance Fedallah then chastised Ahab for his lingering belief that a cruelty would be done to the drugged felon, one more cruel than those he had perpetrated against his many nubile victims.
Ere long the man burned with fever; his body shuddered, vibrating against the deck; aloft all is yet commotion and busy-ness; none above hear aught of anything below, and such is the way of the world; for ever is heaven deaf to the carking cares of earthbound souls! And both are blind and deaf to those below and further beneath.
Soon the thing’s eyes opened in milky stare and, already restrained, the thing attempted to lunge upwards, Fedallah standing with sharpened boarding sword above it, prepared to swing, cautioning ye to look away lest the spatter further infect thee. Fedallah landed three deft and nearly delicate cuts and then in one mighty chop sliced through the monster’s abdomen, and through the spine, one vertebra above the hips. The tarpaulin placed under the body to gather the gore was then removed, and dumped surreptitiously overboard. Fedallah now brandishes the carpenter’s borrowed augur drill, sets its point against the groaning thing’s skull, and begins to crank its handle.
Enough! Ahab must have air. Air!
Chapter
Monkey Rope
In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little, to such time as the whale was yet moored alongside the Pequod, in an effort to bring some small levity to the darkness recently revealed.
It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.
Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round the waist and tightly tied at the back.
It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then honour demanded that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. An elongated Siamese ligature united us; Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.
So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge me into disaster and death. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, you, one way or other, have this Siamese connection with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks by dint of his unscrupulousness, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die; if when fighting a zomby with good intent you taste bitter salt as some drop of gore lands on your tongue, you become undead. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.[1]
[1]The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This improvement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder.
I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the whale and the ship—where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from the carcase—the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.
And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.
Nevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a ravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to them. Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from too clos
e a vicinity to the maw of what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark—he was provided with still another protection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego and Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen whale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could reach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and benevolent of them. They meant Queequeg’s best happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail. But poor Queequeg, straining and gasping there with that great iron hook—poor Queequeg, I suppose, only prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of his gods.
Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea—what matters it, after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.
Zomby Dick or, The Undead Whale Page 29