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OB. A.D. 1892. 




THE WORKS OF 
HERMAN MELVILLE 

STANDARD EDITION 

VOLUME 

VII 



MOBY- DICK 

OR, THE WHALE 

BY 

HERMAN MELVILLE 



IN TWO VOLUMES 
VOL. I 



CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD 

LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY 
1922 



Ps 



Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



IN TOKEN 

OF MY ADMIRATION FOB HIS GENIUS 

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 

TO 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. LOOMINGS . 1 

II. THE CARPET-BAG ...... 8 

III. THE SPOUTER-INN . . . . . . 13 

IV. THE COUNTERPANE . . . . . 31 
V. BREAKFAST ...... 36 

VI. THE STREET . . . . . 39 

VII. THE CHAPEL . . . . . . 42 

VIII. THE PULPIT ....... 46 

IX. THE SERMON ...... 49 

X. A BOSOM FRIEND ...... 60 

XI. NIGHTGOWN 65 

XII. BIOGRAPHICAL ...... 68 

XIII. WHEELBARROW . . . . . . 71 

XIV. NANTUCKET ....... 77 

XV. CHOWDER ....... 80 

XVI. THE SHIP . 84 

XVII. THE RAMADAN ...... 102 

XVHI. HIS MARK ....... 110 

XIX. THE PROPHET . . . . . .115 

XX. ALL ASTIR ....... 119 

XXI. GOING ABOARD ...... 122 

XXII. MERRY CHRISTMAS . . . . .126 

XXIII. THE LEE SHORE . . . . . .132 

XXIV. THE ADVOCATE . . . . . .134 

XXV. POSTSCRIPT . . . . . 140 

XXVI. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES . . . .141 

XXVII. KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES .... 145 

XXVIII. AHAB ....... 151 

vii 



viii MOBY-DICK 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXIX. ENTER AHAB ; TO HIM, STUBB . . .156 

XXX. THE PIPE ...... 160 

XXXI. QUEEN MAB 161 

XXXII. CETOLOGY . . . . . .164 

XXXIII. THE SPECKS YNDER 180 

XXXIV. THE CABIN -TABLE 184 

XXXV. THE MAST-HEAD . . . . .191 

XXXVI. THE QUARTER-DECK ..... 199 
XXXVII. SUNSET . . . . . . . 209 

XXXVIII. DUSK 211 

XXXIX. FIRST NIGHT-WATCH . . . . .213 

XL. MIDNIGHT, FORECASTLE . . . .214 

XLI. MOBY-DICK ...... 222 

XLII. THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE . . 234 

XLIII. HARK! 245 

XLIV. THE CHART ...... 247 

XLV. THE AFFIDAVIT ...... 254 

XLVI. SURMISES 265 

XLVII. THE MAT-MAKER 269 

XLVIII. THE FIRST LOWERING . . . . . 273 

XLIX. THE HYENA ...... 286 

L. AHAB'S BOAT AND CREW. FED ALLAH . . 289 

LI. THE SPIRIT-SPOUT 293 

MI. THE ALBATROSS ...... 298 

Mil. THE GAM 301 

LIV. THE TOWN-HO'S STORY 306 

LV. OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES . 331 

LVI. OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES 337 

LVII. OF WHALES IN PAINT, IN TEETH, ETC. . 342 

LVIII. BRIT 346 

LIX. SQUID 350 

LX. THE LINE . 353 



MOBY-DICK 

OR 

THE WHALE 



ETYMOLOGY 

(SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO 
A GBAMMAB SCHOOL) 

THE pale Usher threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain ; 
I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and 
grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished 
with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. 
He loved to dust his old grammars ; it somehow mildly 
reminded him of his mortality. 



ETYMOLOGY 



' WHILE you take in hand to school others, and to teach 
them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, 
leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost 
alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver 
that which is not true.' Hakluyt. 

1 WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is 
named from roundness or rolling ; for in Dan. hvalt is arched 
or vaulted.' Webster's Dictionary. 

' WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. 
and Ger. W alien ; A.S. Walw-ian y to roll, to wallow.' 

Richardson's Dictionary. 

Hebrew. 

Greek. 

Latin, 

Anglo-Saxon. 

Danish. 

Dutch. 

Swedish. 

Icelandic. 

English. 



in, 



CETUS, 

WHCEL, 

HVALT, 

WAL, 

HWAL, 

WHALE, 

WHALE, 

BALEINE, 

BALLENA, 

PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, 

PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, 



French. 
Spanish. 
Feegee. 
Erromangoan. 



EXTRACTS 
(SUPPLIED BY A SUB-SUB-LIBRARIAN) 

IT will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and 
grub -worm of a poor devil of a Sub -Sub appears to have gone 
through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, pick- 
ing up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways 
find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore 
you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy 
whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for 
veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the 
ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, 
these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording 
a glancing bird's-eye view of what has been promiscuously 
said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many 
nations and generations, including our own. 

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commen- 
tator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe 
which no wine of this world will ever warm ; and for whom 
even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong ; but with whom 
one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too ; and 
grow convivial upon tears ; and say to them bluntly with full 
eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant 
sadness Give it up, Sub-Subs ! For by how much the more 
pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall 
ye forever go thankless ! Would that I could clear out 
Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye ! But gulp down 
your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts ; 
for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the 
seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered 
Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here 
ye strike but splintered hearts together there, ye shall 
strike unsplinterable glasses! 



xii 



EXTRACTS 

' And God created great whales.' 



Genesis. 



* Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him ; 
One would think the deep to be hoary.' 

Job. 

' Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up 
Jonah.' Jonah. 

' There go the ships ; there is that Leviathan whom thou 
hast made to play therein.' Psalms. 

' In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong 
sword, shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even 
Leviathan that crooked serpent ; and he shall slay the dragon 
that is in the sea.' Isaiah. 

* And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos 
of this monster's mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it 
goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and 
perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.' 

HollancFs Plutarch's Morals. 

' The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes 
that are : among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called 
Balaene, take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of 
land.' Holland's Pliny. 

' Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when 
about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of 
the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a most 
monstrous size. * * * This came towards us, open- 
mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea 
before him into a foam.' 

Tooke's Lucian. The True History. 

xiii 



xiv MOBY-DICK 

' He visited this country also with a view of catching horse - 
whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth, 
of which he brought some to the king. * * * The best 
whales were catched in his own country, of which some were 
forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one 
of six who had killed sixty in two days.' 

Other or Octher's verbal narrative taken down 
from his mouth by King Alfred, A.D. 890. 

1 And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, 
that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) 
mouth, are immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea- 
gudgeon retires into it in great security, and there sleeps.' 
Montaigne 1 s Apology for Eaimond Sebond. 

' Let us fly, let us fly ! Old Nick take me if it is not 
Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life 
of patient Job.' Rabelais. 

' This whale's liver was two cart-loads.' 

Stowe's Annals. 

1 The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like 
boiling pan.' Lord Bacon's Version of the Psalms. 

' Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we 
have received nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, 
insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil will be extracted 
out of one whale.' Ibid. History of Life and Death. 

1 The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an in- 
ward bruise.' King Henry. 

' Very like a whale.' Hamlet. 

' Which to secure, no skill of leach's art 
Mote him availle, but to returne againe 
To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart, 
Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine, 
Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine.' 

The Fairie Queen. 

' Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can 
in a peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil.' 

Sir William Davenant's Preface to Gondibert. 



EXTRACTS xv 

' What spermaceti! is, men might justly doubt, since the 
learned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, 
Nescio quid sit.' 

Sir T. Browne's Of Sperma Ceti and the 
Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V.E. 

' Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail 

He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. 
****** 

Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears, 
And on his back a grove of pikes appears.' 

Waller's Battle of the Summer Islands. 

' By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Common- 
wealth or State (in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial 
man.' Opening sentence of Hobbes's Leviathan. 

'Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had 
been a sprat in the mouth of a whale.' 

Pilgrim's Progress. 
* That sea beast 

Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.' 

Paradise Lost. 
4 There Leviathan, 

Hugest of living creatures, in the deep 
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, 
And seems a moving land ; and at his gills 
Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.' 

Ibid. 

' The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and 
have a sea of oil swimming in them.' 

Fuller's Profane and Holy State. 
' So close behind some promontory lie 

The huge Leviathans to attend their prey, 
And give no chace, but swallow in the fry, 

Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.' 
Dry den's Annus Mirabilis. 

' While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they 
cut off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it 
will come ; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet 
water.' 

Thomas Edge's Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas. 



xvi MOBY-DICK 

* In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, 
and in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes 
and vents, which nature has placed on their shoulders.' 

Sir T. Herberts Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll. 

4 Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were 
forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they 
should run their ship upon them.' 

Schouten's Sixth Circumnavigation. 

* We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called 
The Jonas-in-the-Whale. * * * 

Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but that is a 
fable. * * * 

They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they 
can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his 
pains. * * * 

I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above 
a barrel of herrings in his belly. * * * 

One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a 
whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.' 

A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671. Harris Coll. 

' Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife). Anno 
1652, one eighty feet in length of the whale -bone kind came 
in, which, (as I was informed) besides a vast quantity of oil, 
did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a 
gate in the garden of Pitferren.' 

Sibbald's Fife and Kinross. 

4 Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill 
this Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that 
sort that was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and 
swiftness.' 

Richard Strafford's Letter from the Bermudas. 
Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668. 

' Whales in the sea 
God's voice obey.' 

N. E. Primer. 

1 We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more 
in those southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one ; 
than we have to the northward of us.' 

Captain Cowley's Voyage round the Globe, A.D. 1729. 



EXTRACTS xvii 

****** an( j ^e breath of the whale is fre- 
quently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to 
bring on a disorder of the brain.' 

Ulloa's South America. 

1 To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, 
We trust the important charge, the petticoat. 
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, 
Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.' 

Rape of the Lock. 

' If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with 
those that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they 
will appear contemptible in the comparison. The whale is 
doubtless the largest animal in creation.' 

Goldsmith's Nat. Hist. 

' If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would 
make them speak like great whales.' 

Goldsmith to Johnson. 

' In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, 
but it was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had 
killed, and were then towing ashore. They seemed to en- 
deavour to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to 
avoid being seen by us.' Cook's Voyages. 

' The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They 
stand in so great dread of some of them, that when out at 
sea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry 
dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of 
the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent 
their too near approach.' 

Uno Von Troil's Letters on Banks' s and 
Solander's Voyage to Iceland in 1772. 

' The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is 
an active, fierce animal, and requires vast address and bold- 
ness in the fishermen.' 

Thomas Jefferson's Whale Memorial to the 
French Minister in 1778. 

1 And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it ? ' 

Edmund Burke's Reference in Parliament 

to the Nantucket Whale Fishery. 
VOL. I. b 



xviii MOBY-DICK 

' Spain a great whale stranded on. the shores of Europe.' 

Edmund Burke. (Somewhere.} 

' A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to 
be grounded on the consideration of his guarding and pro- 
tecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to 
royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when 
either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the pro- 
perty of the king.' Blackstone. 

c Soon to the sport of death the crews repair : 
Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends 
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.' 

Falconer's Shipwreck. 

' Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, 

And rockets blew self driven, 
To hang their momentary fire 
Around the vault of heaven. 

' So fire with water to compare, 

The ocean serves on high, 

Up-spouted by a whale in air, 

To express unwieldy joy.' 

Cowper, On the Queen's Visit to London. 

' Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart 
at a stroke, with immense velocity.' 

John Hunter's Account of the Dissection 
of a Whale. (A small-sized one.) 

' The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main 
pipe of the water- works at London Bridge, and the water 
roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus 
and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale's heart.' 

Paley's Theology. 

' The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.' 

Baron Cuvier. 

' In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did 
not take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered 
with them.' 

Colnett's Voyage for the Purpose of Extending 
the Spermacetti Whale Fishery. 



EXTRACTS xix 

' In the free element beneath me swam, 
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle, 
Fishes of every colour, form, and kind ; 
Which language cannot paint, and mariner 
Had never seen ; from dread Leviathan 
To insect millions peopling every wave : 
Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands, 
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste 
And trackless region, though on every side 
Assaulted by voracious enemies, 
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw, 
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.' 

Montgomery' '<$ World before the Flood. 

' lo ! Paean ! lo ! sing, 
To the finny people's king. 
Not a mightier whale than this 
In the vast Atlantic is ; 
Not a fatter fish than he, 
Flounders round the Polar Sea.' 

CJiarles Lamb's Triumph of the Whale. 

' In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing 
the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one 
observed ; there pointing to the sea is a green pasture 
where our children's grand-children will go for bread.' 

Obed Macy's History of Nantucket. 

' I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway 
in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw 
bones.' Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. 

' She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who 
had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than 
forty years ago.' Ibid. 

' " No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom ; " I saw his 
spout ; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian 
would wish to look at. He 's a raal oil-butt, that fellow ! " ' 

Cooper's Pilot. 

' The papers were brought in,, and we saw in the Berlin 
Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.' 
Eckermanris Conversations with Goethe. 



xx MOBY-DICK 

' " My God ! Mr. Chace, what is the matter ? " I answered, 
" We have been stove by a whale." ! 

Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship 
Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and 
finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in 
the Pacific Ocean. By Owen Chace of Nan- 
tucket, first mate of said vessel. New York, 
1821. 

' A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, 

The wind was piping free ; 

Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale, 
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale, 
As it floundered in the sea.' 

Elizabeth Oakes Smith. 

' The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats 
engaged in the capture of this one whale, amounted alto- 
gether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles. * * * 

t Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the 
air, which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of 
three or four miles.' Scoresby. 

1 Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, 
the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over ; he rears his 
enormous head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at every- 
thing around him ; he rushes at the boats with his head ; 
they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and some- 
times utterly destroyed. 

* * * It is a matter of great astonishment that the 
consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a com- 
mercial point of view, of so important an animal (as the Sperm 
Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have 
excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of 
them competent observers, that of late years must have 
possessed the most abundant and the most convenient oppor- 
tunities of witnessing their habitudes. 5 

Thomas Beale's History of the Sperm Whale. 1839. 

' The Cachalot ' (Sperm Whale) ' is not only better armed 
than the True Whale ' (Greenland or Right Whale) ' in possess- 
ing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, 
but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ 
these weapons offensively, and in a manner at once so artful, 



EXTRACTS xxi 

bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the 
most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the 
whale tribe.' 

Frederick Debell Bennett's Whaling Voyage 
round the Globe. 1840. 

' October 13. " There she blows," was sung out from the 
mast-head. 

" Where away ? " demanded the captain. 

" Three points off the lee bow, sir." 

" Raise up your wheel. Steady ! " 

" Steady, sir." 

" Mast-head ahoy ! Do you see that whale now ? " 

" Ay, ay, sir ! A shoal of Sperm Whales ! There she 
blows ! There she breaches ! " 

" Sing out ! sing out every time ! " 

" Ay, ay, sir ! There she blows ! there there thar she 
blows bowes bo-o-o-s ! " 

" How far off ? " 

c< Two miles and a half." 

" Thunder and lightning ! so near ! Call all hands ! " 

J. Ross Browne's Etchings of a 
Whaling Cruise. 1846. 

4 The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred 
the horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to 
the island of Nantucket.' 

Narrative of the Globe Mutiny, by 
Lay and Hussey, Survivors. A.D. 1828. 

c Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, 
he parried the assault for some time with a lance ; but the 
furious monster at length rushed on the boat ; himself and 
comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water 
when they saw the onset was inevitable. 5 

Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett. 

' Nantucket itself,' said Mr. Webster, ' is a very striking 
and peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a 
population of eight or nine thousand persons, living here 
in the sea, adding largely every year to the National wealth 
by the boldest and most persevering industry.' 

Report of Daniel Webster's Speech in the U.S. 
Senate, on the Application for the Erection 
of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 1828. 



xxii . MOBY-DICK 

' The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him 
in a moment.' 

The Whale and his Captors, or the Whale- 
man's Adventures and the Whale's Bio- 
graphy, gathered on the Homeward Cruise 
of the Commodore Preble. By Rev. Henry 
T. Cheever. 

' " If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, 
" I will send you to hell." ' 

Life of Samuel Comstock (the Mutineer), by 
his Brother, William Comstock. Another 
Version of the Whale-ship Globe Narrative. 

' The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern 
Ocean, in order, if possible, to discover a passage through it 
to India, though they failed of their main object, laid open 
the haunts of the whale.' 

McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary. 

4 These things are reciprocal ; the ball rebounds, only to 
bound forward again ; for now in laying open the haunts 
of the whale, the whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon 
new clews to that same mystic North -West Passage.' 

From ' Something ' unpublished. 

4 It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean with- 
out being struck by her near appearance. The vessel under 
short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning 
the wide expanse around them, has a totally different air 
from those engaged in a regular voyage.' 

Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex. 

1 Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may 
recollect having seen large curved bones set upright in the 
earth, either to form arches over gateways, or entrances to 
alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that these 
were the ribs of whales.' 

Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean. 

' It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these 
whales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession 
of the savages enrolled among the crew.' 

Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking 
of the Whale-ship Hobomack. 



EXTRACTS xxiii 

' It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling 
vessels (American) few ever return in the ships on board of 
which they departed.' Cruise in a Whale Boat. 

1 Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and 
shot up perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.' 

Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman. 

' The Whale is harpooned to be sure ; but bethink you, 
how you would manage a powerful unbroken colt, with the 
mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail.' 

A Chapter on WJialing in Ribs and Trucks. 

' On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) 
probably male and female, slowly swimming, one after the 
other, within less than a stone's throw of the shore ' (Tierra 
del Fuego), ' over which the beech tree extended its branches.' 

Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist. 

' " Stern all ! " exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his 
head, he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale 
close to the head of the boat, threatening it with instant 
destruction ; " Stern all, for your lives ! " 

Wharton the Whale Killer. 

' So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, 
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale ! ' 

Nantucket Song. 

' Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale, 

In his ocean home will be 
A giant in might, where might is right, 
And King of the boundless sea.' 

Whale Song. 



MOBY-DICK 

CHAPTER I 

LOOMINGS 

CALL me Ishmael. Some years ago never mind how 
long precisely having little or no money in my purse, 
and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought 
I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the 
world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and 
regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself 
growing grim about the mouth ; whenever it is a damp, 
drizzly November in my soul ; whenever I find myself 
involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bring- 
ing up the rear of every funeral I meet ; and especially 
whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that 
it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from 
deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically 
knocking people's hats off then, I account it high time 
to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for 
pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws 
himself upon his sword ; I quietly take to the ship. 
There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew 
it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, 
cherish very nearly the same feelings toward the ocean 
with me. 

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, 
belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs 
commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the 
streets take you waterward. Its extreme down -town is the 
battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and 

VOL. I. A 



2 MOBY-DICK 

cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of 
sight of land. Look at the crowds of water -gazers there. 

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath after- 
noon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and 
from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you 
see ? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, 
stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed 
in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles ; 
some seated upon the pier-heads ; some looking over 
Vhe bulwarks of ships from China ; some high aloft in 
the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward 
peep. But these are all landsmen ; of week days pent 
up in lath and plaster tied to counters, nailed to benches, 
clinched to desks. How then is this ? Are the green 
fields gone ? What do they here ? 

But look ! here come more crowds, pacing straight for 
the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange ! 
Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the 
land ; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses 
will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the 
water as they possibly can without falling in. And there 
they stand miles of them leagues. Inlanders all, they 
come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues north, 
east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, 
does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses 
of all those ships attract them thither ? 

Once more. Say, you are in the country ; in some 
high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, 
and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves 
you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. 
Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his 
deepest reveries stand that man on his legs, set his feet 
a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water 
there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst 
in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your 



LOOMINGS 3 

caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical 
professor. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation andli 
water are wedded forever. 

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the 
dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of 
romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What 
is the chief element he employs ? There stand his trees, 
each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix 
were within ; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep 
his cattle ; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy 
smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, 
reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in 
their hillside blue. But though the picture lies thus 
tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs 
like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were 
vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the 
magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, 
when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee -deep 
among tiger-lilies what is the one charm wanting ?- 
Water there is not a drop of water there ! Were Niagara 
but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand 
miles to see it ? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, 
upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate 
whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or 
invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach ? 
Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust 
healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to 
sea ? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did 
you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first ; 
told that you and your ship were now out of sight of ' 
land ? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy ? 
Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own 
brother of Jove ? Surely all this is not without meaning. 
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, 
who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild 



4 MOBY-DICK 

image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was 
drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all 
rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable 
phantom of life ; and this is the key to it all. 

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea 
whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin 
to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have 
it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to 
go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a 
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Be- 
sides, passengers get sea-sick grow quarrelsome don't 
sleep of nights do not enjoy themselves much, as a 
general thing ; no, I never go as a passenger ; nor, 
though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a 
Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the 
glory and distinction of such offices to those who like 
them. For my part, I abominate all honourable respect- 
able toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind what- 
soever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care 
of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, 
schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook, 
though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a 
cook being a sort of officer on shipboard yet, somehow, 
I never fancied broiling fowls ; though once broiled, 
judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and 
peppered, there is no one who will speak more respect- 
fully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I 
will. It is out of the idolatrous do tings of the old 
Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that 
you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge 
bake-houses the pyramids. 

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right 
before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft 
there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order 
me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, 



LOOMINGS 5 

like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this 
sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's 
sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old estab- 
lished family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Ran- 
dolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just 
previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have 
been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the 
tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a 
keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, 
and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics 
to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears 
off hi time. 

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders 
me to get a broom and sweep down the decks ? What 
does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the 
scales of the New Testament ? Do you think the arch- 
angel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I 
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that 
particular instance ? Who ain/t a slave ? Tell me that. 
Well, then, however the~old^sea -captains may order me 
about however they may thump and punch me about, 
I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right ; 
that everybody else is one way or other served in much the 
same way either in a physical or metaphysical point of 
view, that is ; and so the universal thump is passed 
round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder- 
blades, and be content. 

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make 
a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never 
pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On 
the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And 
there is all the difference in the world between paying 
and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most 
uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves 
entailed upon us. But being paid, what will compare 



6 MOBY-DICK 

with it ? The urbane activity with which a man receives 
money is really marvellous, considering that we so 
earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, 
and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. 
Ah ! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition ! 

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the 
wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. 
For as in this world, head-winds are far more prevalent 
than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate 
the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the com- 
modore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at 
second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks 
he breathes it first ; but not so. In much the same 
way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other 
things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. 
But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt 
the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into 
my head to go on a whaling voyage ; this the invisible 
police-officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveil- 
lance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in 
some unaccountable way he can better answer than any 
one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling 
voyage formed part of the grand programme of Provi- 
dence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in 
as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more exten- 
sive performances. I take it that this part of the bill 
must have run something like this : 

' Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the 
United States. 

' WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. 

1 BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.' 

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those 
stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby 



LOOMINGS 7 

part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down 
for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy 
parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces 
though I cannot tell why this was exactly ; yet, now that 
I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little 
into the springs and motives which, being cunningly 
presented to me under various disguises, induced me to 
set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me 
into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my 
own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. 

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea 
of the great whale himself. Such a gortentous and 
mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the 
wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk ; 
the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale ; these, 
with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian 
sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With 
other men, perhaps, such things would not have been 
inducements ; but as for me, I am tormented with an 
everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail for- 
bidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring 
what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could 
still be social with it would they let me since it is 
but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of 
the place one lodges in. 

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage 
was welcome ; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world 
swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to 
my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost 
soul, endless processions of the whale, and, midmost of 
them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in 
the air. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CARPET-BAG 

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked 
it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the 
Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly 
arrived in New Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in 
December. Much was I disappointed upon learning 
that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, 
and that no way of reaching that place would offer, till 
the following Monday. 

As most young candidates for the pains and penalties 
of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to 
embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I 5 
for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made 
up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because 
there was a fine, boisterous something about everything 
connected with that famous old island, which amazingly 
pleased me. Besides, though New Bedford has of late 
been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and 
though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much 
behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original the 
Tyre of this Carthage ; the place where the first dead 
American whale was stranded. Where else but from 
Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red Men, 
first sally out in canoes to give chase to the leviathan ? 
And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adven- 
turous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported 
cobble-stones so goes the story to throw at the whales, 



THE CARPET-BAG 9 

in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk 
a harpoon from the bowsprit ? 

Now having a night, a day, and still another night 
following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark 
for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment 
where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very 
dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, 
bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. 
With anxious grapnelsJE had sounded my pocket, and only 
brought up a few pieces of silver. So, wherever you go, 
Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a 
dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the 
gloom toward the north with the darkness toward the 
south wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to 
lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire 
the price, and don't be too particular. 

With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the 
sign of 'The Crossed Harpoons ' but it looked too expen- 
sive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red 
windows of the ' Sword-Fish Inn,' there came such fer- 
vent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow 
and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the 
congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic 
pavement, rather weary for me, when I struck my foot 
against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorse- 
less service the soles of mv boots were in a most miserable 

V 

plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing 
one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and 
hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go i 
on, Ishmael, said I at last ; don't you hear ? get away l 
from before the door ; your patched boots are stopping 
the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the 
streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, 
were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns. 

Such dreary streets ! blocks of blackness, not houses, 



10 MOBY-DICK 

on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle 
moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of 
the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved 
all but deserted. But presently I carne to a smoky 
light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of 
which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as 
if it were meant for the uses of the public ; so, entering, 
the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in 
the porch. Ha ! thought I, ha, as the flying particles 
almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed 
city, Gomorrah ? But ' The Cfossed Harpoons ' and 
4 The Sword-Fish ' ? this, then, must needs be the sign 
of ' The Trap. ' However, I picked myself up , and hearing 
a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, 
interior door. 

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. 
A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer ; 
and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book 
in a pulpit. It was a negro church ; and the preacher's 
text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weep- 
ing and wailing and teeth -gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, 
muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the 
sign of ' The Trap ' ! 

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far 
from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air ; 
and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with 
a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight 
jet of misty spray, and these words underneath ' The 
Spouter-Inn : Peter Coffin.' 

Coffin ? Spouter ? Rather ominous in that particu- 
lar connection, thought I. But it is a common name in 
Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an 
emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and 
the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the 
dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might 



THE CARPET-BAG 11 

have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt dis- 
trict, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort 
of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for 
cheap lodgings, and the best of pea-coffee. 

It was a queer sort of place a gable-ended old house, 
one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It 
stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous 
wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it 
did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, never- 
theless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to anyone indoors, 
with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. 4 In 
judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,' 
says an old writer of whose works I possess the only 
copy extant ' it maketh a marvellous difference, 
whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where 
the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest 
it from that Cashless window, where the frost is on both 
sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier.' 
True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my 
mind old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these 
eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. 
What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the 
crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. 
But it 's too late to make any improvements now. The 
universe is finished ; the cope-stone is on, and the chips 
were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, 
chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, 
and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might 
plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his 
mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous 
Euroclydon. Euroclydon ! says old Dives, in his red 
silken wrapper (he had a redder one afterward) pooh, 
pooh ! What a fine frosty night ; how Orion glitters ; 
what northern lights ! Let them talk of their oriental 
summer climes of everlasting conservatories ; give me 



12 MOBY-DICK 

the privilege of making my own summer with my own 
coals. 

But what thinks Lazarus ? Can he warm his blue 
hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights ? 
Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here ? 
Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along 
the line of the equator ; yea, ye gods ! go down to the 
fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost ? 

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the 
curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful 
than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the 
Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar 
in an ice-palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president 
of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of 
orphans. 

But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a- 
whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let 
us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort 
of a place this ' Spouter ' may be. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SPOTTTER-INN 

ENTERING that gable -ended Spouter-Inn, you found 
yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned 
wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some con- 
demned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil- 
painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, 
that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, 
it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic 
visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbours, that 
you could any way arrive at an understanding of its 
purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and 
shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious 
young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had 
endeavoured to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint 
of much and earnest contemplation, and oft-repeated 
ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little 
window toward the back of the entry, you at last come 
to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might 
not be altogether unwarranted. 

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a 
long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hover- 
ing in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, 
perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, 
soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous 
man distracted. Yet there was a sort of indefinite, half- 
attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly 
froze you to it, till you in voluntarily, took an oath with 
yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. 

is 



14 MOBY-DICK 

Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would 
dart you through. It 's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. 
It 's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. 
It 's a blasted heath. It 's a Hyperborean winter scene. 
It 's the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time. 
But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous 
something in the picture's midst. That once found out, 
and all the rest were plain. But stop ; does it not bear 
a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish ? even the great 
leviathan himself ? 

In fact, the artist's design seemed this : a final theory 
of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions 
of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the 
subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great 
hurricane ; the half-foundered ship weltering there with 
its three dismantled masts alone visible ; and an exasper- 
ated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is 
in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three 
mast-heads. 

The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with 
a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some 
were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory 
saws ; others were tufted with knots of human hair ; and 
one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round 
like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long- 
armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and 
wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could 
ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, 
horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty 
old whaling-lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. 
Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, 
now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain 
kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And 
that harpoon so like a corkscrew now was flung in 
Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years after- 



THE SPOUTER-INN 15 

ward slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron 
entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning 
in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last 
was found imbedded in the hump. 

Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low- 
arched way cut through what in old times must have 
been a great central chimney with fire-places all round 
you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, 
with such low ponderous beams above, and such old 
wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy 
you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a 
howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked 
so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like 
table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty 
rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. 
Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a 
dark-looking den the bar a rude attempt at a right 
whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast 
arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might 
almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, 
ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks ; and in 
those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah 
(by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little 
withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the 
sailors deliriums and death. 

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his 
poison. Though true cylinders without within, the 
villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered down- 
ward to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely 
pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. 
Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny ; to this 
a penny more ; and so on to the full glass the Cape 
Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling. 
Upon entering the place I found a number of young 
seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light 



16 MOBY-DICK 

divers speiimens of skrimshander. I sought the land- 
lord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with 
a room, received for answer that his house was full not 
a bed unoccupied. ' But avast, 5 he added, tapping his 
forehead, ' you hain't no objections to sharin* a har- 
pooneer 's blanket, have ye ? I s'pose you are goin' a- 
whalin 5 , so you 'd better get used to that sort of thing. 5 

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed ; that 
if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the 
harpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) really 
had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not 
decidedly objectionable, why, rather than wander further 
about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put 
up with the half of any decent man 5 s blanket. 

' I thought so. All right ; take a seat. Supper ? 
you want supper ? Supper 5 11 be ready directly. 5 

I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like 
a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar 
was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping 
over and diligently working away at the space between 
his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, 
but he didn't make much headway, I thought. 

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our 
meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland 
no fire at all the landlord said he couldn't afford it. 
Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding 
sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey-jackets, 
and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half- 
frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial 
kind not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings ; good 
heavens ! dumplings for supper ! One young fellow in 
a green box-coat addressed himself to these dumplings 
hi a most direful manner. 

' My boy,' said the landlord, ' you '11 have the night- 
mare to a dead sartainty.' 



THE SPOUTER-INN 17 

'Landlord,' I whispered, w that ain't the harpooneer, 
is it ? ' 

1 Oh, no/ said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, 
4 the harpooneer is a dark - complexioned chap. He 
never eats dumplings, he don't he eats nothing but 
steaks, and likes 'em rare.' 

' The devil he does, ' says I. ' Where is that harpooneer ? 
Is he here ? ' 

' He '11 be here afore long,' was the answer. 

I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of 
this ' dark-complexioned ' harpooneer. At any rate, I 
made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should 
sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before 
I did. 

Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, 
when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved 
to spend the rest of the evening as a looker-on. 

Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting 
up, the landlord cried, ' That 's the Grampus's crew. I 
seed her reported in the offing this morning ; a three 
years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys ; now we '11 
have the latest news from the Feegees.' 

A tramping of sea-boots was heard in the entry ; the 
door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners 
enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch-coats, and 
with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all be- 
darned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, 
they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They 
had just landed from their boat, and this was the first 
house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made 
a straight wake for the whale's mouth the bar when 
the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon 
poured them out brimmers all round. One complained 
of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed 
him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he 

VOL. I. B 



18 MOBY-DICK 

swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs 
whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether 
caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather-side 
of an ice -island. 

The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it 
generally does even with the arrantest topers newly 
landed from sea, and they began capering about most 
obstreperously. 

I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat 
aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the 
hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon 
the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the 
rest. This man interested me at once ; and since the sea- 
gods had ordained that he should soon become my ship- 
mate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this 
narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little 
description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with 
noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have 
seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply 
brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the 
contrast ; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated 
some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much 
joy. His voice at once announced that he was a 
Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must 
be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian 
Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions 
had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unob- 
served, and I saw no more of him till he became my 
comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was 
missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some 
reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of 
' Bulkington ! Bulkington ! where 5 s Bulkington ? ' and 
darted out of the house in pursuit of him. 

It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming 
almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began 



THE SPOUTER-INN 19 

to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred 
to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen. 

No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you 
would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. 
I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when 
they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with 
an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, 
and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections 
indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason 
why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than 
anybody else ; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at 
sea, than bachelor kings do ashore. To be sure, they 
all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your 
own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, 
and sleep in your own skin. 

The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I 
abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was 
fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or 
woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, 
certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. 
Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer 
ought to be home and going bedward. Suppose now, 
he should tumble in upon me at midnight how could I 
tell from what vile hole he had been coming ? 

' Landlord ! I Ve changed my mind about that 
harpooneer. I shan't sleep with him. I '11 try the bench 
here.' 

' Just as you please ; I 'm sorry I can't spare ye a 
tablecloth for a mattress, and it 's a plaguy rough board 
here ' feeling of the knots and notches. ' But wait 
a bit, Skrimshander ; I Ve got a carpenter's plane there 
in the bar wait, I say, and I '11 make ye snug enough.' 
So saying he procured the plane ; and with his old silk 
handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to 
planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. 



20 MOBY-DICK 

The shavings flew right and left ; till at last the plane- 
iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The 
landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for 
heaven's sake to quit the bed was soft enough to suit 
me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world 
could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering 
up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them 
into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went 
about his business, and left me in a brown study. 

I now took the measure of the bench, and found that 
it was a foot too short ; but that could be mended with 
a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other 
bench in the room was about four inches higher than the 
planed one so there was no yoking them. I then placed 
the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space 
against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my 
back to settle down in. But I soon found that there 
came such a draught of cold air over me from under the 
sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, 
especially as another current from the rickety door met 
the one from the window, and both together formed a 
series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the 
spot where I had thought to spend the night. 

The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, 
couldn't I steal a march on him bolt his door inside, and 
jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent 
knockings ? It seemed no bad idea ; but upon second 
thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what 
the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, 
the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready 
to knock me down ! 

Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible 
chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other 
person's bed, I began to think that after all I might be 
cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown 



THE SPOQTER-INN 21 

harpooneer. Thinks I, I '11 wait awhile ; he must be 
dropping in before long. 1 11 have a good look at him 
then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows 
after all there 's no telling. 

But though the other boarders kept coming in by 
ones, twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of 
my harpooneer. 

4 Landlord ! ' said I, ' what sort of a chap is he does 
he always keep such late hours ? ' It was now hard 
upon twelve o'clock. 

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, 
and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond 
my comprehension. ' No,' he answered, ' generally he 5 s 
an early bird airley to bed and airley to rise yes, he 's 
the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he 
went out a-peddling, you see, and I don't see what 
on airth keeps him so late, unless, maybe, he can't sell 
his head.' 

' Can't sell his head ? What sort of a bamboozingly 
story is this you are telling me ? ' getting into a tower- 
ing rage. ' Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this 
harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday 
night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head 
around this town ? ' 

' That 's precisely it,' said the landlord, ' and I told 
him he couldn't sell it here, the market 's overstocked.' 

' With what ? ' shouted I. 

' With heads, to be sure ; ain't there too many heads 
in the world ? ' 

' I tell you what it is, landlord,' said I, quite calmly, 
' you 'd better stop spinning that yarn to me I 'm not 
green.' 

6 Maybe not, ' taking out a stick and whittling a tooth- 
pick, ' but I rayther guess you '11 be done brown if that 
'ere harpooneer hears you a-slanderin' his head.' 



22 MOBY-DICK 

' I '11 break it for him/ said I, now flying into a passion 
again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's. 

' It 's broke a 'ready,' said he. 

' Broke/ said I ' broke, do you mean ? ' 

' Sartain, and that 's the very reason he can't sell it, 
I guess.' 

' Landlord/ said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. 
Hecla in a snow-storm, 'landlord, stop whittling. You 
and I must understand one another, and that too without 
delay. I come to your house and want a bed ; you tell 
me you can only give me half a one ; that the other half 
belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this har- 
pooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling 
me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending 
to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling toward the man 
whom you design for my bedfellow* a sort of connection, 
landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the 
highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and 
tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I 
shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. 
And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that 
story about selling his head, which if true I take to be 
good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I 've 
no idea of sleeping with a madman ; and you, sir, you 
I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do 
so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a 
criminal prosecution.' 

' Wall/ said the landlord, fetching a long breath, 'that 's 
a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and 
then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have 
been tellin' you of has just arrived from the South Seas, 
where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand heads 
(great curios, you know), and he 's sold all on 'em but 
one, and that one he 's tryin' to sell to-night, cause to- 
morrow 's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' 



THE SPOUTER-INN 23 

human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to 
churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him 
just as he was goin' out of the door with four heads strung 
on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.' 

This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable 
mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had 
no idea of fooling me but at the same time what could 
I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday 
night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a 
cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolaters ? 

' Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a danger- 
ous man.' 

' He pays reg'lar, 5 was the rejoinder. ' But come, 
it 's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning 
flukes it 's a nice bed : Sail and me slept in that 'ere 
bed the night we were spliced. There 's plenty room for 
two to kick about in that bed ; it 's an almighty big bed 
that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam 
and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a-dreaming 
and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got 
pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. 
Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, 
I '11 give ye a glim in a jiffy ' ; and so saying he lighted a 
candle and held it toward me, offering to lead the way. 
But I stood irresolute ; when looking at a clock in the 
corner, he exclaimed, ' I vum it 's Sunday you won't 
see that harpooneer to-night ; he 's come to anchor some- 
where come along then ; do come ; won't ye come ? ' 

I considered the matter a moment, and then upstairs 
we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a 
clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, 
almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to 
sleep abreast. 

' There,' said the landlord, placing the candle on a 
crazy old sea-chest that did double duty as a wash-stand 



24 MOBY-DICK 

and centre table ; ' there, make yourself comfortable 
now, and good night to ye.' I turned round from eyeing 
the bed, but he had disappeared. 

Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. 
Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny 
tolerably well. I then glanced round the room ; and 
besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other 
furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four 
walls, and a papered fire-board representing a man striking 
a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, 
there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the 
floor in one corner ; also a large seaman's bag, containing 
the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. 
Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish-hooks 
on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon stand- 
ing at the head of the bed. 

But what is this on the chest ? I took it up, and held 
it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried 
every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory con- 
clusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but 
a large door-mat, ornamented at the edges with little 
tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills 
round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in 
the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South 
American ponchos. But could it be possible that any 
sober harpooneer would get into a door-mat, and parade 
the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise ? 
I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, 
being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a 
little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had 
been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit 
of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a 
sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry 
that I gave myself a kink in the neck. 

I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced 



THE SPOUTER-INN 25 

thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his 
door-mat. After thinking some time on the bedside, I 
got up and took off my monkey-jacket, and then stood 
in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my 
coat, and thought a little more in my shirt -sleeves. But 
beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, 
and remembering what the landlord said about the har- 
pooneer 's not coming home at all that night, it being so 
very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my 
pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light 
tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of 
heaven. 

Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or 
broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a 
good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last 
I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a 
good offing toward the land of Nod, when I heard a 
heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light 
come into the room from under the door. 

Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, 
the infemal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and 
resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a 
light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head 
in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without 
looking toward the bed, placed his candle a good way 
off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began 
working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I 
before spoke of as being in the room. I was all eagerness 
to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while 
employed in unlacing the bag 's mouth . This accomplished, 
however, he turned round when, good heavens ! what a 
sight ! Such a face ! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow 
colour, here and there stuck over with large, blackish- 
looking squares. Yes, it 's just as I thought, he 's a 
terrible bedfellow ; he 's been in a fight, got dreadfully 



26 MOBY-DICK 

cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that 
moment he chanced to turn his face so toward the light, 
that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at 
all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were stains 
of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make 
of this ; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. 
I remembered a story of a white man a whaleman too 
who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by 
them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of 
his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adven- 
ture. And what is it, thought I, after all ! It 's only 
his outside ; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. 
But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, 
that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely 
independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it 
might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning ; 
but I never heard of a hot sun's tanning a white man into 
a purplish-yellow one. However, I had never been in 
the South Seas ; and perhaps the sun there produced 
these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while 
all these ideas were passing through me like lightning, 
this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some 
difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling 
in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and 
a sealskin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the 
old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New 
Zealand head a ghastly thing enough and crammed it 
down into the bag. He now took off his hat a new 
beaver hat when I came nigh singing out with fresh 
surprise. There was no hair on his head none to speak 
of, at least nothing but a small scalp -knot twisted up on 
his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for 
all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the^stranger 
stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out 
of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner. 



THE SPOUTER-INN 27 

Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out 
of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am 
no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple 
rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance, 
js^the parent^QJJear, and being completely nonplussed 
and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now 
as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who 
had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In 
fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough 
just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory 
answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. 

Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, 
and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these 
covered parts of him were checkered with the same 
squares as his face ; his back, too, was all over the same 
dark squares ; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' 
War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. 
Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of 
dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young 
palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some 
abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whale- 
man in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian 
country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too 
perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take 
a fancy to mine heavens ! look at that tomahawk ! 

But there was no time for shuddering, for now the 
savage went about something that completely fascinated 
my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be 
a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or 
dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, 
he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a 
curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, 
and exactly the colour of a three-days-old Congo baby. 
Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost 
thought that this black manikin was a real baby pre- 



28 MOBY-DICK 

served in some similar manner. But seeing that it was 
not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like 
polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but 
a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now 
the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing 
the papered fire -board, sets up this little hunchbacked 
image, like a ten-pin, between the andirons. The chimney 
jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that 
I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little 
shrine or chapel for his Congo idol. 

I now screwed my eyes hard toward the half-hidden 
image, feeling but ill at ease meantime to see what was 
next to follow. First he takes about a double handful 
of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them 
carefully before the idol ; then laying a bit of ship -biscuit 
on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled 
<the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after 
many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier with- 
drawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching 
them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the 
biscuit ; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, 
he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the 
little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at 
all ; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics 
were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from 
the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song 
or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during 
which his face twitched about in the most unnatural 
manner. At last, extinguishing the fire, he took the idol 
up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his 
grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman 
bagging a dead woodcock. 

All these queer proceedings increased my uncomf ortable- 
ness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of 
concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed 



THE SPOUTER-INN 29 

with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before 
the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had 
so long been bound. 

But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say 
was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, 
he examined the head of it for an instant, and then hold- 
ing it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed 
out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment 
the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, toma- 
hawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I 
sang out, I could not help it now ; and giving a sudden 
grunt of astonishment he began feeling me. 

Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled 
away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, 
whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let 
me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural 
responses satisfied me at once that he but ill compre- 
hended my meaning. 

' Who-e debel you ? ' he at last said ' you no speak-e, 
dam-me, I kill-e.' And so saying the lighted tomahawk 
began flourishing about me in the dark. 

4 Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin ! ' shouted I. 
' Landlord ! Watch ! Coffin ! Angels ! save me ! ' 

1 Speak-e ! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e ! ' 
again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings 
of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about 
me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank 
heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room 
light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him. 

4 Don't be afraid now,' said he, grinning again. ' Quee- 
queg here wouldn't harm a hair of your head.' 

' Stop your grinning,' shouted I, ' and why didn't you 
tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal ? ' 

' I thought ye know'd it ; didn't I tell ye, he was 
a-peddlin' heads around town ? but turn flukes again 



30 MOBY-DICK 

and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here you sabbee me, 
I sabbee you this man sleepe you you sabbee ? ' 

' Me sabbee plenty,' grunted Queequeg, puffing away 
at his pipe and sitting up in bed. 

' You gettee in/ he added, motioning to me with his 
tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He 
really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and 
charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For 
all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely- 
looking cannibal. What 's all this fuss I have been 
making about, thought I to myself the man ? s a human 
being just as I am : he has just as much reason to fear 
me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a 
sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. 

'Landlord,' said I, 'tell him to stash his tomahawk 
there, or pipe, or whatever you call it ; tell him to stop 
smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I 
don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It 's 
dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured.' 

This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and 
again politely motioned me to get into bed rolling over 
to one side as much as to say, I won't touch a leg of ye. 

' Good night, landlord,' said I, ' you may go.' 

I turned in, and never slept better in my life. 






CHAPTER IV 

THE COUNTERPANE 

UPON waking next morning about daylight, I found 
Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and 
affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had 
been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full 
of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles ; and 
this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable 
Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were 
of one precise shade owing, I suppose, to his keeping 
his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his 
shirt-sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times 
this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like 
a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly 
lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could 
hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues 
together ; and it was only by the sense of weight and 
pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me. 
My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain 
them. When I was a child, I well remember a somewhat 
similar circumstance that befell me ; whether it was a 
reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The 
circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some 
caper or other I think it was trying to crawl up the 
chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days 
previous ; and my stepmother, who, somehow or other, 
was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed 
supperless, my mother dragged me by the legs out 
of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was 
only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the 

31 



32 MOBY-DICK 

longest day in the year in our hemisphere. 1 felt dread- 
fully. But there was no help for it, so upstairs I went 
to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as 
slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter 
sigh got between the sheets. 

I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire 
hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. 
Sixteen hours in bed ! the small of my back ached to 
think of it. And it was so light too ; the sun shining 
in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the 
streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. 
I felt worse and worse at last I got up, dressed, and 
softly going down in my stockinged feet, sought out my 
stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, be- 
seeching her as a particular favour to give me a good 
slippering for my misbehaviour ; anything indeed but con- 
demning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of 
time. But she was the best and most conscientious of 
stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For 
several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great 
deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the 
greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have 
fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze ; and slowly 
waking from it half steeped in dreams I opened my 
eyes, and the before sunlit room was now wrapped in 
outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through 
all my frame ; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was 
to be heard ; but a supernatural hand seemed placed 
in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the 
nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which 
the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bedside. 
For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen 
with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my 
hand ; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one 
single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I knew 



THE COUNTERPANE 33 

not how this consciousness at last glided away from me ; 
but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered 
it all, and for days and weeks and months afterward I 
lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. 
Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it. 

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at 
feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar, 
in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on 
waking up and seeing Queequeg 's pagan arm thrown 
round me. But at length all the past night's events 
soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I 
lay only alive to the comical predicament. For though 
I tried to move his arm unlock his bridegroom clasp 
yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as 
though naught but death should part us twain. I now 
strove to rouse him * Queequeg ! ' but his only answer 
was a snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if 
it were in a horse-collar ; and suddenly felt a slight 
scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the 
tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a 
hatchet -faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I ; 
abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a 
cannibal and a tomahawk ! ' Queequeg ! in the name 
of goodness, Queequeg, wake ! ' At length, by dint of 
much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations 
upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow-male in 
that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting 
a grunt ; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook 
himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the 
water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pikestaff, looking at 
me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether re- 
member how I came to be there, though a dim conscious- 
ness of knowing something about me seemed slowly 
dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, 
having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly 

VOL. i. c 



34 MOBY-DICK 

observing so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind 
seemed made up touching the character of his bed- 
fellow, and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact, 
he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain signs and 
sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he 
would dress first and then leave me to dress afterward, 
leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, 
Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilised 
overture ; but, the truth is, these savages have an innate 
sense of delicacy, say what you will ; it is marvellous how 
essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compli- 
ment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much 
civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great 
rudeness ; staring at him from the bed, and watching all 
his toilet motions ; for the time my curiosity getting the 
better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man like Quee- 
queg you don't see every day, he and his ways were well 
worth unusual regarding. 

He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver 
hat, a very tall one, by the by, and then still minus his 
trowsers he hunted up his boots. What under the 
heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement 
was to crush himself boots in hand, and hat on under 
the bed ; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strain- 
ings, I inferred he was hard at work booting himself ; 
though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of is 
any man required to be private when putting on his boots. 
But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transi- 
tion state neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was 
just enough civilised to show off his outlandishness in the 
strangest possible manner. His education was not yet 
completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not 
been a small degree civilised, he very probably would 
not have troubled himself with boots at all ; but then, 
if he had not been still a savage, he never would have 



THE COUNTERPANE 35 

dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At 
last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and 
crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking and 
limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed 
to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones pro- 
bably not made to order either rather pinched and 
tormented him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning. 

Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, 
and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite 
commanded a plain view into the room, and observing 
more and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg 
made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots 
on, I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his 
toilet somewhat, and particularly to get into his panta- 
loons as soon as possible. He complied, and then pro- 
ceeded to wash himself. At that time in the morning 
any Christian would have washed his face ; but Queequeg, 
to my amazement, contented himself with restricting 
his ablutions to his chest, arms, and hands. He then 
donned his waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap 
on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water and 
commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see 
where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the 
harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden 
stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, 
and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, 
begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his 
cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best 
cutlery with a vengeance. Afterward I wondered the 
less at this operation when I came to know of what 
fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how 
exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept. 

The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly 
marched out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot 
monkey-jacket, and sporting his harpoon like a marshal's 
baton. 



CHAPTER V 

BREAKFAST 

I QUICKLY followed suit, and descending into the bar-room 
accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I 
cherished no malice toward him, though he had been 
skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my 
bedfellow. 

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and 
rather too scarce a good thing ; the more 's the pity. So, 
if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for 
a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let 
him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in 
that way. And the man that has anything bountifully 
laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man 
than you perhaps think for. 

The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been 
dropping in the night previous, and whom I had not as 
yet had a good look at. They were nearly all whalemen ; 
chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea- 
carpenters, and sea-coopers, and sea-blacksmiths, and 
harpooneers, and ship-keepers ; a brown and brawny 
company, with bosky beards ; an unshorn, shaggy set, 
all wearing monkey-jackets for morning gowns. 

You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had 
been ashore. This young fellow's healthy cheek is like 
a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell 
almost as musky ; he cannot have been three days landed 
from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a 
few shades lighter ; you might say a touch of satinwood 

36 



BREAKFAST 37 

is in him. In the complexion of a third still lingers a 
tropic tawn, but slightly bleached withal ; lie doubtless 
has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show a 
cheek like Queequeg ? which, barred with various tints, 
seemed like the Andes' western slope, to show forth in 
one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone. 

' Grub, ho ! ' now cried the landlord, flinging open a 
door, and in we went to breakfast. 

They say that men who have seen the world, thereby 
become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in 
company. Not always, though : Ledyard, the great New 
England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one ; of 
all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlour. 
But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge 
drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary 
walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, 
which was the sum of poor Mungo 's performances this 
kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of 
attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, 
that sort of thing is to be had anywhere. 

These reflections just here are occasioned by the cir- 
cumstance that after we were all seated at the table, and 
I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling ; 
to my no small surprise nearly every man maintained a 
profound silence. And not only that, but they looked 
embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of 
whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded 
great whales on the high seas entire strangers to them 
and duelled them dead without winking ; and yet, here 
they sat at a social breakfast table all of the same calling, 
all of kindred tastes looking round as sheepishly at 
each other as though they had never been out of sight 
of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A 
curious sight ; these bashful bears, these timid warrior 
whalemen ! 



38 MOBY-DICK 

But as for Queequeg why, Queequeg sat there among 
them at the head of the table, too, it so chanced as 
cool as an icicle. To be sure, I cannot say much for his 
breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially 
justified his bringing his harpoon in to breakfast with him, 
and using it there without ceremony ; reaching over the 
table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, 
and grappling the beefsteaks toward him. But that 
was certainly very coolly done by him, and everyone 
knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything 
coolly is to do it genteelly. 

We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here ; 
how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his 
undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, 
that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest 
into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was 
sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his 
inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE STREET 

IF I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so 
outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among 
the polite society of a civilised town, that astonishment 
soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through 
the streets of New Bedford. 

In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable sea- 
port will frequently offer to view the queerest -looking 
nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway 
and Chestnut Streets, Mediterranean mariners will some- 
times jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not 
unknown to Lascars and Malays ; and at Bombay, in the 
Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. 
But New Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. 
In these last -mentioned haunts you see only sailors ; but 
in New Bedford actual cannibals stand chatting at street 
corners ; savages outright ; many of whom yet carry on 
their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. 

But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatabooarrs, Erro- 
manggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians, and besides 
the wild specimens of the whaling -craft which unheeded 
reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more 
curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive 
in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hamp- 
shire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. 
They are mostly young, of stalwart frames ; fellows who 
have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and 
snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green 



40 MOBY-DICK 

Mountains whence they came. In some things you would 
think them but a few hours old. Look there ! that chap 
strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and 
swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor -belt and a sheath- 
knife. Here comes another with a sou '-wester and a 
bombazine cloak. 

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred 
one I mean a downright bumpkin dandy a fellow that, 
in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin 
gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country 
dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distin- 
guished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you 
should see the comical things he does upon reaching the 
seaport. In bespeaking his sea -out fit, he orders bell- 
buttons to his waistcoats ; straps to his canvas trowsers. 
Ah, poor Hay-Seed ! how bitterly will burst those straps 
in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps/ 
buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest. 

But think not that this famous town has only har- 
pooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. 
Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it 
not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this 
day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the 
coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country 
are enough to frighten one, they look so bony. The town 
itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, hi all New 
England. It is a land of oil, true enough : but not like 
Caanan ; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do 
not run with milk ; nor in the spring-time do they pave 
them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in 
all America will you find more patrician-like houses ; 
parks and gardens more opulent, than hi New Bedford. 
Whence came they ? how planted upon this once scraggy 
scoria of a country ? 

Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons 






THE STREET 41 

round yonder lofty mansion, and your question will be 
answered. Yes ; all these brave houses and flowery 
gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. 
One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither 
from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander per- 
form a feat like that ? 

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for 
dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces 
with a few porpoises apiece. You must go to New Bed- 
ford to see a brilliant wedding ; for, they say, they have 
reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly 
burn their lengths in spermaceti candles. 

In summer time, the town is sweet to see ; full of fine 
maples long avenues of green and gold. And in August, 
high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, 
candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering 
upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent \ 
is art ; which in many a district of New Bedford has 
superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren 
refuse rocks thrown aside at Creation's final day. 

And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their 
own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer ; whereas 
the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight 
in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom 
of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me 
the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweet- 
hearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were 
drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic 
sands. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CHAPEL 

IN this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's 
Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound 
for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday 
visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not. 

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied 
out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from 
clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping 
myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, 
I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, 
I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and 
sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, 
only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each 
silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from 
the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incom- 
municable. The chaplain had not yet arrived ; and there 
these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly 
eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned 
into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them 
ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to 
quote : 

SACRED 



OF 

JOHN TALBOT, 

Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, 

Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, 

November 1st, 1836. 

THIS TABLET 

Is erected to his Memory 

BY HIS SISTER. 



42 



THE CHAPEL 43 

SACRED 

^o tlje em orp 

OF 

ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, 

NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, 

AND SAMUEL GLEIG, 

Forming one of the boats' crews 
OF 

THE SHIP ELIZA, 

Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, 
On the Ofi-shore Ground in the 

PACIFIC, 
December 3lst, 1839. 

THIS MABBLB 

Is here placed by their surviving 
Shipmates 



SACKED 

Eo tfje 

OF 

The late 

CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, 

Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a 

Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, 

August 3d, 1833. 

THIS TABLET 

Is erected to his Memory 
BY 

HIS WIDOW. 

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, 
I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was 
surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the 
solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of 
incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage 
was the only person present who seemed to notice my 
entrance ; because he was the only one who could not 
read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscrip- 
tions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the 



44 MOBY-DICK 

seamen whose names appeared there were now among 
the congregation, I knew not ; but so many are the unre- 
corded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several 
women present wear the countenance if not the trappings 
of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before 
me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the 
sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the 
old wounds to bleed afresh. 

Oh ! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass ; 
who standing among flowers can say here, here lies my 
beloved ; ye know not the desolation that broods in 
bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black- 
bordered marbles which cover no ashes ! What despair 
in those immovable inscriptions ! What deadly voids 
and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw 
upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who 
have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might 
those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. 

Li what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind 
are included ; why it is that a universal proverb says of 
them, that they tell no tales, though containing more 
secrets than the Goodwin Sands ; how it is that to his 
name who yesterday departed for the other world, we 
prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not 
thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies 
of this living earth ; why the Life Insurance Companies 
pay death-forfeitures upon immortals ; in what eternal, 
unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies 
antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago ; how 
it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we 
nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss ; 
why all the living so strive to hush all the dead ; wherefore 
but the rumour of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a 
whole city. All these things are not without their 
meanings. 



THE CHAPEL 45 

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and 
even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital 
hope. 

It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the 
eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble 
tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful 
day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before 
me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But 
somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to 
embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems ay, a 
stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, 
there is death in this business of whaling a speechlessly 
quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what 
then ? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter 
of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my 
shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks 
that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like 
oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking 
that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body 
is but the lees of my better being. In fact, take my body 
who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three 
cheers for Nantucket ; and come a stove boat and stove 
body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself 
cannot. 






CHAPTER VIII 

THE PULPIT 

I HAD not been seated very long ere a man of a certain 
venerable robustness entered ; immediately as the storm- 
pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regard- 
ful eyeing of him by all the congregation sufficiently 
attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, 
it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whale- 
men, among whom he was a very great favourite. He 
had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for 
many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. 
At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the 
hardy winter of a healthy old age ; that sort of old age 
which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for 
among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain 
mild gleams of a newly developing bloom the spring 
verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow. 
No one having previously heard his history, could for 
the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost 
interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical 
peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous 
maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed 
that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come 
in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting 
sleet, and his great pilot-cloth jacket seemed almost to 
drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had 
absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were 
one by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an 
adjacent corner ; when, arrayed in a decent suit, he 
quietly approached the pulpit. 

46 



THE PULPIT 47 

Like most old-fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, 
and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its 
long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already 
small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had 
acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the 
pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side 
ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at 
sea. The wife of a whaling-captain had provided the chapel 
with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this 
ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with 
a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering 
what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad 
taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, 
and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs 
of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upward, 
and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential 
dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if 
ascending the main -top of his vessel. 

The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually 
the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, 
only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there 
was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not 
escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these 
joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For 
I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining 
the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the 
pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till 
the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable 
in his little Quebec. 

I pondered some time without fully comprehending 
the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide 
reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not 
suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of 
the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober 
reason for this thing ; furthermore, it must symbolise 



48 MOBY-DICK 

something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of 
physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for 
the time, from all outward worldly ties and connections ? 
Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, 
to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self- 
containing stronghold a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a 
perennial well of water within the walls. 

But the side ladder was not the only strange feature 
of the place, borrowed from the chaplain's former sea- 
farings. Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand 
of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was adorned 
with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating 
against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and 
snowy breakers. But high above the flying scud and 
dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, 
from which beamed forth an angel's face ; and this bright 
face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship's tossed 
deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into the 
Victory's plank where Nelson fell. ' Ah, noble ship/ the 
angel seemed to say, 'beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and 
bear a hardy helm ; for lo ! the sun is breaking through ; 
the clouds are rolling off serenest azure is at hand.' 

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same 
sea -taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. 
Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, 
and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll 
work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle -headed beak. 

What could be more full of meaning ? for the pulpit 
is ever this earth's foremost part ; all the rest comes in 
its rear ; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is 
the storm of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the 
bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the 
God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable 
winds. Yes, the world 's a ship on its passage out, and 
not a voyage complete ; and the pulpit is its prow. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE SERMON 

FATHER MAPPLE rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming 
authority ordered the scattered people to condense. 
' Starboard gangway, there ! side away to larboard 
larboard gangway to starboard ! Midships ! midships ! ' 

There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the 
benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, 
and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher. 

He paused a little ; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, 
folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted 
his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout 
that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of 
the sea. 

This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual 
tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog 
in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn ; 
but changing his manner toward the concluding stanzas, 
burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy : 

* The ribs and terrors in the whale 

Arched over me a dismal gloom, 
While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by, 
And lift me deepening down to doom. 

' I saw the opening maw of hell, 

With endless pains and sorrows there ; 
Which none but they that feel can tell 
Oh, I was plunging to despair. 

VOL. I. D 



50 MOBY-DICK 

4 In black distress, I called my God, 

When I could scarce believe him mine, 
He bowed his ear to my complaints 
No more the whale did me confine. 

' With speed he flew to my relief, 

As on a radiant dolphin borne ; 
Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone 
The face of my Deliverer God. 

' My song for ever shall record 

That terrible, that joyful hour ; 
I give the glory to my God, 

His all the mercy and the power.' 

Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled 
high above the howling of the storm. A brief pause 
ensued ; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of 
the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the 
proper page, said : ' Beloved shipmates, clinch the last 
verse of the first chapter of Jonah " And God had pre- 
pared a great fish to swallow up Jonah." 

' Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters 
four yarns is one of the smallest strands in the mighty 
cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does 
Jonah's deep sea-line sound ! what a pregnant lesson to 
us is this prophet ! What a noble thing is that canticle 
in the fish's belly ! How billow-like and boisterously 
grand ! We feel the floods surging over us ; we sound with 
him to the kelpy bottom of the waters ; sea-weed and all 
the slime of the sea is about us ! But what is this lesson 
that the book of Jonah teaches ? Shipmates, it is a two- 
stranded lesson ; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a 
lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, 
it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard- 
heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punish- ! 



THE SERMON 51 

ment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and 
joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin 
of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the 
command of God never mind now what that command 
was, or how conveyed which he found a hard command. 
But all the things that God would have us do are hard for 
us to do remember that and hence, He oftener com- 
mands us than endeavours to persuade. And if we obey 
God, we must disobey ourselves ; and it is in this dis- 
obeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God 
consists. 

' With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still 
further flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He 
thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into 
countries where God does not reign, but only the captains 
of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, 
and seeks a ship that 's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, 
perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all 
accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the 
modern Cadiz. That 's the opinion of learned men. And 
where is Cadiz, shipmates ? Cadiz is in Spain ; as far by 
water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed 
in those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost 
unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, ship- 
mates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, 
the Syrian ; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand 
miles to the westward from that, just outside the Straits 
of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah 
sought to flee world- wide from God ? Miserable man ! 
Oh ! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn ; with 
slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God ; 
prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening 
to cross the seas. So disordered, self -condemning is his 
look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, 
on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been 



52 MOBY-DICK 

arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he 's a 
fugitive ! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet- 
bag, no friends accompany him to the wharf with their 
adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the 
Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo ; and 
as he steps on board to see its captain in the cabin, all 
the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the 
goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye. Jonah sees this ; 
but in vain he tries to look ah 1 ease and confidence ; in 
vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the 
man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their 
gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other 
" Jack, he 's robbed a widow " ; or, " Joe, do you mark 
him ; he 's a bigamist " ; or, " Harry, lad, I guess he 's the 
adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one 
of the missing murderers from Sodom." Another runs 
to read the bill that 's stuck against the spile upon the 
wharf to which the ship is moored, offering five hundred 
gold coins for the apprehension of a. parricide, and con- 
taining a description of his person. He reads, and looks 
from Jonah to the bill ; while all his sympathetic ship- 
mates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their 
hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summon- 
ing all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the 
more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected ; 
but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best 
of it ; and when the sailors find him not to be the man that 
is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into the 
cabin. 

' " Who 's there ? " cries the captain at his busy desk, 
hurriedly making out his papers for the Customs "Who 's 
there ? " Oh ! how that harmless question mangles 
Jonah ! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. 
But he rallies. " I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish ; 
how soon sail ye, sir ? " Thus far the busy captain had 



THE SERMON 53 

not looked up to Jonah, though the man now stands 
before him ; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, 
than he darts a scrutinising glance. " We sail with the 
next coming tide," at last he slowly answered, still 
intently eyeing him. " No sooner, sir ? " " Soon enough 
for any honest man that goes a passenger." Ha ! Jonah, 
that 's another stab. But he swiftly calls away the 
captain from that scent. " I '11 sail with ye," he says, 
" the passage money, how much is that ? I '11 pay 
now." For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it 
were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, " that 
he paid the fare thereof " ere the craft did sail. And 
taken with the context, this is full of meaning. 

' Now Jonah's captain, shipmates, was one whose dis- 
cernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes 
it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin 
that pays its way can travel freely, and without a pass- 
port ; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all 
frontiers. So Jonah's captain prepares to test the length 
of Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges 
him thrice the usual sum ; and it 's assented to. Then 
the captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive ; but at the 
same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with 
gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent 
suspicions still molest the captain. He rings every coin 
to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, anyway, he mutters ; 
and Jonah is put down for his passage. " Point out my 
state-room, sir," says Jonah now, " I 'm travel- weary ; 
I need sleep." "Thou look'st like it," says the captain, 
" there 's thy room." Jonah enters, and would lock the 
door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly 
fumbling there, the captain laughs lowly to himself, and 
mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being 
never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty 
as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds 



54 MOBY-DICK 

the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. 
The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that con- 
tracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, 
Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling 
hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of 
his bowel's wards.