Herman Melville CHAPTER 1. Loomings. Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money 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 bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and ...Read More

CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag. I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn. Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane. Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER 5. Breakfast. I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I no malice towards 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER 6. The Street. If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford. In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often ...Read More

CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit. I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful 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 whalemen, 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, ...Read More

CHAPTER 7. The Chapel. In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and few are the moody 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, ...Read More

CHAPTER 9. The Sermon. Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend. Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone; he left the Chapel before the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way. But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, ...Read More

CHAPTER 11. Nightgown. We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future. Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up; ...Read More

CHAPTER 12. Biographical. Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It not down in any map; true places never are. When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were ...Read More

CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow. Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my comrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied with. We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we went down ...Read More

CHAPTER 14. Nantucket. Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine run, we safely in Nantucket. Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they ...Read More

CHAPTER 15. Chowder. It was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to anchor, and and I went ashore; so we could attend to no business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that Cousin Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that ...Read More

CHAPTER 16. The Ship. In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and no concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, that he had been diligently consulting Yojo—the name of his black little god—and Yojo had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it everyway, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in harbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say, Yojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us; and, in order ...Read More

CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan. As Queequeg’s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented ...Read More

CHAPTER 18. His Mark. As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers. “What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?” said I, now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf. “I mean,” he replied, “he must show his papers.” “Yes,” said Captain Bildad in his hollow ...Read More

CHAPTER 19. The Prophet. “Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?” Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, were sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a ...Read More

CHAPTER 20. All Astir. A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened that the ship’s preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall. On ...Read More

CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard. It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh wharf. “There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,” said I to Queequeg, “it can’t be shadows; she’s off by sunrise, I guess; come on!” “Avast!” cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah. “Going aboard?” “Hands off, will you,” said ...Read More

CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas. At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers, and after the had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift—a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward—after all this, the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said: “Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab is all ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from shore, ...Read More

CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore. Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in Bedford at the inn. When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no ...Read More

CHAPTER 24. The Advocate. As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales. In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into ...Read More

CHAPTER 25. Postscript. In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy? It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who knows? Certain I ...Read More

CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires. The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried ...Read More

CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires. Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable arrangement of ...Read More

CHAPTER 28. Ahab. For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates relieved each other at the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin. Every time I ascended to ...Read More

CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb. Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, ’twas hard to choose between ...Read More

CHAPTER 30. The Pipe. When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks; and then, had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked. In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of ...Read More

CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab. Next morning Stubb accosted Flask. “Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know old man’s ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask—you know how curious all dreams are—through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it ...Read More

CHAPTER 32. Cetology. Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow. It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it ...Read More

CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder. Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place as any to 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table. It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head. It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other seamen first mast-head came round. In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her—say, an empty vial even—then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires ...Read More

CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck. (Enter Ahab: Then, all.) It was not a great while after the affair of the that one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden. Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you ...Read More

CHAPTER 37. Sunset. The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out. I leave a white turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. Yonder, by ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—slow dived from noon—goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; ...Read More

CHAPTER 38. Dusk. By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it. My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who’s over him, he cries;—aye, he would be a democrat to all ...Read More

CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch. Fore-Top. (Stubb solus, and mending a brace.) Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I’ve thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha’s the final consequence. Why so? Because a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what will, one comfort’s always left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; had had the gift, ...Read More

CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle. HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS. (Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and lying in attitudes, all singing in chorus.) Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies! Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain! Our captain’s commanded.— 1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me! (Sings, and all follow.) Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in his hand, A viewing of those gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys, And by your braces stand, ...Read More

CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick. I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge. For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied, secluded White Whale had haunted ...Read More

CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale. What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at he was to me, as yet remains unsaid. Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that ...Read More

CHAPTER 43. Hark! “HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?” It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen standing in a cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly ...Read More

CHAPTER 44. The Chart. Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took place the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating himself before it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. ...Read More

CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit. So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the ...Read More

CHAPTER 46. Surmises. Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways, altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his ...Read More

CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker. It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self. I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or ...Read More

CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering. The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side of deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the captain’s, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black trowsers ...Read More

CHAPTER 49. The Hyena. There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties ...Read More

CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah. “Who would have thought it, Flask!” cried Stubb; “if I had but leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber toe. Oh! he’s a wonderful old man!” “I don’t think it so strange, after all, on that account,” said Flask. “If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other left, you know.” “I don’t know that, my little man; I never ...Read More

CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout. Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St. Helena. It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silent ...Read More

CHAPTER 52. The Albatross. South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen, sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean fisheries—a whaler at sea, and long absent from home. As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while ...Read More

CHAPTER 53. The Gam. The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on board of the whaler we had was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded her—judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions—if so it had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer to the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he could contribute some of that information ...Read More

CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story. (As told at the Golden Inn.) The Cape of Good Hope, and all the region round about there, is much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more travellers than in any other part. It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of ...Read More

CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales. I shall ere long paint to you as well as one without canvas, something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the world right ...Read More

CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes. In connexion with monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by. I know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale; Colnett’s, Huggins’s, Frederick Cuvier’s, and Beale’s. In the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins’s is far better than theirs; ...Read More

CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars. On as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a crippled beggar (or kedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted board before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell me, has that ...Read More

CHAPTER 58. Brit. Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow upon which the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat. On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated from ...Read More

CHAPTER 59. Squid. Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north-eastward towards island of Java; a gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen. But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden ...Read More

CHAPTER 60. The Line. With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for the understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line. The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary ...Read More

CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale. If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, Queequeg it was quite a different object. “When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, “then you quick see him ’parm whale.” The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen ...Read More

CHAPTER 62. The Dart. A word concerning an incident in the last chapter. According to the invariable usage of fishery, the whale-boat pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the distance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is ...Read More

CHAPTER 63. The Crotch. Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive grow the chapters. The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow. Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from ...Read More

CHAPTER 64. Stubb’s Supper. Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm; so, a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, ...Read More

CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish. That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it. It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to ...Read More

CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre. When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a’lee; and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches ...Read More

CHAPTER 67. Cutting In. It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio professors of breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods. In the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and which no single man can possibly lift—this vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the ...Read More

CHAPTER 68. The Blanket. I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion. The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness. Now, however preposterous it may at ...Read More

CHAPTER 69. The Funeral. “Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!” The vast tackles have now done duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from ...Read More

CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx. It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the body of the he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason. Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck; on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him ...Read More

CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story. Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock. By and by, through the glass the stranger’s boats and manned mast-heads proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what response would be made. Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of the American Whale ...Read More

CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope. In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole ...Read More

CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him. It must be in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale’s prodigious head hanging to the Pequod’s side. But we must let it continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it. For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now for the head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold. Now, during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually drifted into a sea, which, by its ...Read More

CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View. Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us them, and lay together our own. Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod’s side; and as we ...Read More

CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View. Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at Right Whale’s head. As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale’s head may be compared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale’s head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker’s last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale, with the ...Read More

CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram. Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale’s head, I would have you, as a physiologist, simply—particularly remark its front aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged there. Here is a vital point; for you must either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded ...Read More

CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun. Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated upon. Regarding the Sperm Whale’s head as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and ...Read More

CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets. Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture, runs out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till ...Read More

CHAPTER 79. The Prairie. To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents, and fish; and ...Read More

CHAPTER 80. The Nut. If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that circle which it is impossible to square. In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But in life—as we have elsewhere seen—this inclined plane is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull forms ...Read More

CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin. The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick Deer, master, of Bremen. At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with their flag in the Pacific. For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in ...Read More

CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling. There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the method. The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity. The gallant Perseus, ...Read More

CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded. Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that. One old Sag-Harbor whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this:—He had ...Read More

CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling. To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are anointed; and for much same purpose, some whalers perform an analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly be of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship ...Read More

CHAPTER 85. The Fountain. That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of ages before—the great should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings—that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should ...Read More

CHAPTER 86. The Tail. Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope, and the plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I celebrate a tail. Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale’s tail to begin at that point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in thickness. At ...Read More

CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada. The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from the territories of Birmah, the most southerly point of all Asia. In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, form a vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia, and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly studded oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports for the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous among which are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of ...Read More

CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters. The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm Whales, there was also then given the probable cause inducing those vast aggregations. Now, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each. Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts; those composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but young vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated. In cavalier ...Read More

CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one, necessitates account of the laws and regulations of the whale fishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge. It frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. For example,—after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale, the ...Read More

CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails. “De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam.” Bracton, l. 3, 3. Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, is to this day in force ...Read More

CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud. “In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.” Sir T. Browne, V.E. It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapory, mid-day sea, that the many noses on the Pequod’s deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was smelt in the sea. “I will bet something now,” said Stubb, “that somewhere hereabouts are some of those drugged ...Read More

CHAPTER 92. Ambergris. Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some ...Read More

CHAPTER 93. The Castaway. It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own. Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ...Read More

CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand. That whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case. While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon. It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with ...Read More

CHAPTER 95. The Cassock. Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,—longer than ...Read More

CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works. Besides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly distinguished by her try-works. She presents curious anomaly of the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported to her planks. The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. ...Read More

CHAPTER 97. The Lamp. Had you descended from the Pequod’s try-works to the Pequod’s forecastle, where the off duty were sleeping, for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes. In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual ...Read More

CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up. Already has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors, and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed ...Read More

CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon. Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck, taking turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed ...Read More

CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm. The Pequod, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London. “Ship, ahoy! Hast seen White Whale?” So cried Ahab, once more hailing a ship showing English colours, bearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat’s bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this ...Read More

CHAPTER 101. The Decanter. Ere the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she hailed London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord 1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous fish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) ...Read More

CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides. Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his unconditional skeleton. But how now, Ishmael? ...Read More

CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton. In the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, statement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here. According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base upon Captain Scoresby’s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet ...Read More

CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale. From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship. Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me ...Read More

CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish? Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether, in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk of his sires. But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those belonging to its latter ...Read More

CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg. The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of London, had been unattended with some small violence to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman (it was, as ever, something about his not steering inflexibly enough); then, the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench, that though ...Read More

CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter. Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction; the Pequod’s carpenter was no duplicate; hence, he now comes in person on this stage. Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging to whaling vessels, he was, ...Read More

CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter. The Deck—First Night Watch. (Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and by the light two lanterns busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is firmly fixed in the vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads, screws, and various tools of all sorts lying about the bench. Forward, the red flame of the forge is seen, where the blacksmith is at work.) Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft, and that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and ...Read More

CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin. According to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and no inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down into the cabin to report this unfavourable affair.* *In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it is a regular semi-weekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals, is removed by the ship’s pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be ...Read More

CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin. Upon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted ...Read More

CHAPTER 111. The Pacific. When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South Sea; it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue. There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over ...Read More

CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith. Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in these latitudes, and in for the peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after concluding his contributory work for Ahab’s leg, but still retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would ...Read More

CHAPTER 113. The Forge. With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about mid-day, Perth was standing his forge and anvil, the latter placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with the other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the anvil—the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights, some ...Read More

CHAPTER 114. The Gilder. Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising ground, the Pequod was all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success for their pains. At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; ...Read More

CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor. And jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab’s harpoon had been welded. It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home. The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats; from the ...Read More

CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale. Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favourites sail close us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab. It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; ...Read More

CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch. The four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to windward; less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These last three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one could not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay by its side all night; and that boat was Ahab’s. The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale’s spout-hole; and the lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon the black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which gently ...Read More

CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant. The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Ahab, coming his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the ship’s prow for the equator. In good time the order came. It was hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of the ...Read More

CHAPTER 119. The Candles. Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town. Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon ...Read More

CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch. Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching “We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?” “Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I’d sway them up now.” “Sir!—in God’s name!—sir?” “Well.” “The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?” “Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises, but it has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.—By masts and ...Read More

CHAPTER 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks. Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over the anchors there “No, Stubb; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but you will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how long ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn’t you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn’t you say so?” “Well, ...Read More

CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning. The main-top-sail yard.—Tashtego passing new lashings around it. “Um, um, um. Stop that Plenty too much thunder up here. What’s the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don’t want thunder; we want rum; give us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!” ...Read More

CHAPTER 123. The Musket. During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod’s jaw-bone tiller several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached to it—for they were slack—because some play to the tiller was indispensable. In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the Pequod’s; at almost every shock the helmsman had ...Read More

CHAPTER 124. The Needle. Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving the Pequod’s gurgling track, pushed her on like giants’ palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that ...Read More

CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line. While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this voyage, the and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident reliance upon other means of determining the vessel’s place, some merchantmen, and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave the log; though at the same time, and frequently more for form’s sake than anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the course steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average rate of progression every hour. It had been thus with the ...Read More

CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy. Steering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, and her progress solely determined by Ahab’s level and line; the Pequod held on her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene. At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing by a ...Read More

CHAPTER 127. The Deck. The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open hatchway; the Carpenter its seams; the string of twisted oakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.—Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip following him. “Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand complies with my humor more genially than that boy.—Middle aisle of a church! What’s here?” “Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the hatchway!” “Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to ...Read More

CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel. Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull. “Bad news; she brings bad news,” muttered the old Manxman. But ere her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he could hopefully hail, ...Read More

CHAPTER 129. The Cabin. (Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.) “Lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit here in ...Read More

CHAPTER 130. The Hat. And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a cruise, Ahab,—all other whaling waters swept—seemed to have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered Moby Dick;—and now that all his successive meetings with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which the white whale tore ...Read More

CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight. The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats. Upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you now saw through this ...Read More

CHAPTER 132. The Symphony. It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, ...Read More

CHAPTER 133. The Chase—First Day. That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—as his wont at intervals—stepped forth the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, ...Read More

CHAPTER 134. The Chase—Second Day. At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh. “D’ye see him?” cried Ahab allowing a little space for the light to spread. “See nothing, sir.” “Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought for;—the top-gallant sails!—aye, they should have been kept on her all night. But no matter—’tis but resting for the rush.” Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale, continued through day into night, and through night into day, is a thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For ...Read More

CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day. The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar. “D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight. “In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all. Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing ...Read More