CHAPTER 35
The Mast-Head
It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the
other seamen my 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 of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of
capturing one whale more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very
ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it,
that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in
all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their progenitors,
the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear
the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck
was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by
the board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these
Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a
nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief
among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for
astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar
stairlike formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with
prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to
mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a
modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint
Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty
stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its
summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a
remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to
be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly
facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern
standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and
bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still
entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any
strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of
Vendome stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the
air; careless, now, who rules the decks below, whether Louis Philippe,
Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on
his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules’
pillars, his column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which
few mortals will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal,
stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and even when most obscured by
that London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where
there is smoke, must be fire.
But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a
single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their
counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze; however it may be
surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future,
and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.
It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head
standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is
plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian of
Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early
times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched in pursuit of
the game, the people of that island erected lofty spars along the seacoast, to
which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls
go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this same plan was adopted by
the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave
notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now
become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-
ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set;
the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each
other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly
pleasant the mast-head: nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.
There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the
deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between
your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships
once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There
you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the
waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow;
everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic
whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read
no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude
you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions;
bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of
what you shall have for dinner— for all your meals for three years and
more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.
In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years’
voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the
mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be
deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the
whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything
approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable
localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a
sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug
contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most usual
point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, where you stand upon two
thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t’ gallant
crosstrees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as
he would standing on a bull’s horns. To be sure, in cold weather you may
carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly
speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad
body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot
freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running great risk
of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so
a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or
additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in
your body, and no more can you make a convenience closet of your watch-
coat.
Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a
southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or
pulpits, called crow’s-nests, in which the look-outs of a Greenland whaler
are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the fireside
narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled “A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest
of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost
Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;” in this admirable volume, all
standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial
account of the then recently invented crow’s-nest of the Glacier, which was
the name of Captain Sleet’s good craft. He called it the Sleet’s crow’s-nest,
in honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free
from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own
children after our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and
patentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other
apparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet’s crow’s-nest is something like
a large tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a
movable sidescreen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being
fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-
hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a
comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and
coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet,
pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in
person stood his mast-head in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us that he
always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder
flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or
vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully
shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to
shoot down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor
of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed
conveniences of his crow’s-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of
these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments
in this crow’s-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of
counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the “local attraction”
of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the
iron in the ship’s planks, and in the Glacier’s case, perhaps, to there having
been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though
the Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned
“binnacle deviations,” “azimuth compass observations,” and “approximate
errors,” he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much
immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted
occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely
tucked in on one side of his crow’s nest, within easy reach of his hand.
Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the
honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so
utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it
must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was
studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird’s nest within three or four
perches of the pole.
But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as
Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is greatly
counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas
in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the
rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or
any one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way
further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary
view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.
Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but
sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I
—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—
how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships’
standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.”
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of
Nantucket!
Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and
hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship
with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I
say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-
eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never
make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all
unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many
romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the
corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe
Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some
luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:— “Roll
on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young
philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient “interest”
in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable
ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than
otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their
vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the
visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.
“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been
cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet.
Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.” Perhaps they
were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon;
but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious
reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with
thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet
for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind
and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes
him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form,
seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the
soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit
ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space;
like Crammer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every
shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently
rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable
tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or
hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror.
Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest
weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air
into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
