CHAPTER 26
Knights and Squires
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a
Quaker 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 up all his physical
superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the
token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any
bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no
means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent
fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and
strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to
endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar
snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was
warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to
see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had
calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the
most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of
sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain
qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well
nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman,
and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his
life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of
superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow,
from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward
presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the welded iron of
his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape
wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of
his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in
some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often
evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “I will
have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By
this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage
was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but
that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
“Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as careful a
man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall ere long see what
that word “careful” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or
almost any other whale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all
mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this
business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship,
like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he
had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in
fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought
Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and
not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so
killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father’s? Where, in the
bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck, which
could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it
was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible
experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these
things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under
suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all
his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly,
visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the
conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational
horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more
spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow
of an enraged and mighty man.
But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete
abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to
write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of
valor in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and
nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean
and meagre faces; but, man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a
grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all
his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate
manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact
though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the
undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a
shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting
stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes,
but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it
shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic
dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The
great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His
omnipresence, our divine equality!
If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall
hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic
graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them
all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that
workman’s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his
disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou
just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over
all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not
refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst
clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and
paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson
from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder
him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings,
ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commoners; bear me
out in it, O God!
