CHAPTER 34
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 will 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 super-add 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 war-like 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 shin-bones 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 fore-castle, 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 dinnertime, 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 its residuary legatees. They made a sort of
temporary servants’ hall of the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free license
and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the
harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of
the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a
relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their
bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous
appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by
the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great
baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were
not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then
Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at
his back, harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor,
assisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his
head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand,
began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a
very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the
progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the
standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous
visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy’s whole life was one
continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished
with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his
little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of
its door, till all was over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing his
filed teeth to the Indian’s; crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the floor,
for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines;
at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to
shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all
this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It
seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he
could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a
person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the
abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the
sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are giants made or
nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in
eating— an ugly sound enough—so much so, that the trembling Dough-
Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean
arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce
himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted Steward all but
shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits
of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their
pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at
dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound
did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that
in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of
some murderous, convivial indiscretion. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the
white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his
arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-
sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears,
all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars
in scabbards.
But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived
there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were scarcely
ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when they
passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale
captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the ship’s
cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is,
at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and
harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of
the cabin than in it.
For when they did enter it, it was something as a streetdoor enters a
house; turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as
a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby;
in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible.
Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an
alien to it.
He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled
Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan
of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter
there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s
soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws
of its gloom!
