( Octavo), CHAPTER II. ( Black Fish). --I give the popular fishermen's names
for all these fish, for generally they are the best. Where any name happens
to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so
now, touching the Black Fish, so called, because blackness is the rule among
almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity
is well known, and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips
are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his
face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is
found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal
hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not
more profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena
whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment --as some
frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves,
burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very
thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil.
BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER III. ( Narwhale), that is, Nostril whale.
--Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from his
peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is
some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some
exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is
but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed
from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an
ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy
left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it
would be hard to say. It does not seemed to be used like the blade of the
sword-fish and bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale
employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley
Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the
surface of the Polar Sea,
..
and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through.
But you cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion
is, that however this one-sided horn may really be used by the Narwhale
--however that may be --it would certainly be very convenient to him for a
folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked
whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious
example of the Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated
nature. From certain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same
sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against
poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices.
It was also
distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the
horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in
itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir
Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did
gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as
his bold ship sailed down the Thames; when Sir Martin returned from that
voyage, saith Black Letter, on bended knees he presented to her highness a
prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in
the castle at Windsor. An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester,
on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining
to a land beast of the unicorn nature. The Narwhale has a very picturesque,
leopard-like look, being of a milk-white ground color, dotted with round and
oblong spots of black. His oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there
is little of it, and he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the
circumpolar seas. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER IV. ( Killer). --Of this whale
little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the
professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should
say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage --a sort of
Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs
there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer
is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception
..
might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its
indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and
Sharks included. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER V. ( Thrasher). --This gentleman
is famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He
mounts the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his passage by
flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar
process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are
outlaws, even in the lawless seas. thus ends book II. ( Octavo), and begins
BOOK III. ( Duodecimo). DUODECIMOES. --These include the smaller whales. I.
The Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed
Porpoise. To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it
may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five
feet should be marshalled among WHALES --a word, which, in the popular sense,
always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down above as
Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition of what a
whale is --i. e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail. BOOK III.
( Duodecimo), CHAPTER I ( Huzza Porpoise). -- This is the common porpoise
found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal; for there
are more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish
them. I call them thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which
upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a
Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by
the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy
billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the wind. They
are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at
beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of godly
gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you
one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from
his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among jewellers and
watchmakers.
..
Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It
may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is
so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have
a chance, watch him; and you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in
miniature. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. ( Algerine Porpoise). -- A
pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is
somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make.
Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many
times, but never yet saw him captured. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER III.
( Mealy-mouthed Porpoise). The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in
the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he has
hitherto been designated, is that of the fishers -- Right-Whale Porpoise,
from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio.
In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less
rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like
figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a
lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his
mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a
deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called
the bright waist, that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two
separate colors, black above and white below. The white comprises part of his
head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just
escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect!
His oil is much like that of the common porpoise. Beyond the DUODECIMO, this
system does not proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise is the smallest of the
whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble
of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an American
whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by
their forecastle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to
future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If any of
the following
..
whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be
incorporated into this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo
magnitude: --The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed
Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale;
the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale;
the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities,
there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all
manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can
hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but
signifying nothing. Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system
would not be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I
have kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus
unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane
still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may
be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the
copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This
whole book is but a draught --nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh Time,
Strength, Cash, and Patience!
..
I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and
Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included by
many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a nosy,
contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet
hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as
whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the kingdom of
Cetology.
..
Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because,
while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former
order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet
the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the
shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.
..
.. < chapter xxxiii 24 THE SPECKSYNDER >
Concerning the officers of the
whale-craft, this seems as good a place as any to set down a little domestic
peculiarity on ship-board, arising from the existence of the harpooneer class
of officers, a class unknown of course in any other marine than the
whale-fleet. The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is
evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
and more ago, the command of a whale ship was
..
not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided
between him and an officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means
Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer.
In those days, the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation and
general management of the vessel: while over the whale-hunting department
and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In
the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer,
this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly
abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is
but one of the captain's more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the
good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely
depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important
officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a
whaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also his; therefore the
grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart
from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their
social equal. Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at
sea, is this--the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships
and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and
so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the
after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the
captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of
all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the
community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low,
depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck,
together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work; though all
these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in
merchantmen generally; yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian
family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together; for
all that,
..
the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially
relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships
in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated
grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much
outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of
pilot-cloth. And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the
least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage
he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he required no
man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck; and
though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with
events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether
of condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was
by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea. Nor,
perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and
usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of
them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to
subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good
degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became
incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual
superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available
supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and
entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it
is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's
hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men
who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden
handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over
the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things
when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal
instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as
in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire
encircles an imperial brain;
..
then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization.
Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its
fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important
in his art, as the one now alluded to. But Ahab, my Captain, still moves
before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode
touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with
a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical
trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee,
it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and
featured in the unbodied air!
..
.. < chapter xxxiv 15 THE CABIN-TABLE >
It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the
steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle,
announces dinner to his lord and master; who, sitting in the lee
quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun; and is now
mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet,
reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his
complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not
heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he
swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying,
Dinner, Mr. Starbuck, disappears into the cabin. When the last echo of his
sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to
suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a
few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says,
with some touch of pleasantness, Dinner, Mr. Stubb, and descends the
scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging
..
awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it be all
right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with
a rapid Dinner, Mr. Flask, follows after his predecessors. But the third
emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel
relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks
in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp
but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and
then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a
shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from
the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music.
But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face
altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's
presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It is not the least
among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages,
that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation,
bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet,
ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary
dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not
to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the
table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this
difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of
Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously,
therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who
in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private
dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of
individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of state transcends
Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined
his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social
czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you
superadd the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you
will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.
..
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the
white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In
his own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were as little
children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest
social arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old
man's knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that
for the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest
observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when
reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked,
Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the mate received his
meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started if,
perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed it noiselessly;
and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the Coronation
banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven
Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in
awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he
himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a
sudden racket in the hold below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest
son, and little boy of this weary family party. His were the shinbones of
the saline beef; his would have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have
presumed to help himself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny
in the first degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never
more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world;
nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped
himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all,
did flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of
the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny
complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless
waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern;
however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man! Another thing. Flask was
the last person down at the dinner,
..
and Flask is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was badly
jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him; and
yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who
is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and
soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir
himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day; for it is
against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was
that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the
dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be
otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve
his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought
Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I
wish I could fist a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to
when I was before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the
vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that
any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official
capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was
to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin sky-light,
sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab. Now, Ahab and his three
mates formed what may be called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After
their departure, taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas
cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid
steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being
