CHAPTER 40
Midnight, Forecastle
HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS
(Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and
lying in various 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,
And we’ll have one of those fine whales,
Hand, boys, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK
Eight bells there, forward!
2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR
Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d’ye hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell
eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch. I’ve the sort of
mouth for that—the hogshead mouth. So, so, (thrusts his head down the
scuttle,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells there below! Tumble up!
DUTCH SAILOR
Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I mark this in our old
Mogul’s wine; it’s quite as deadening to some as filliping to others.
We sing; they sleep—aye, lie down there, like ground-tier butts.
At ’em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail ’em through it.
Tell ’em to avast dreaming of their lassies. Tell ’em it’s
the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment.
That’s the way—that’s it; thy throat ain’t spoiled with
eating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR
Hist, boys! let’s have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket
Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip!
little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!
PIP (Sulky and sleepy)
Don’t know where it is.
FRENCH SAILOR
Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say;
merry’s the word; hurrah! Damn me, won’t you dance?
Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle?
Throw yourselves! Legs! legs!
ICELAND SAILOR
I don’t like your floor, maty; it’s too springy to my taste. I’m used to ice-
floors. I’m sorry to throw cold water on the subject; but excuse me.
MALTESE SAILOR
Me too; where’s your girls? Who but a fool would take his left hand by
his right, and say to himself, how d’ye do? Partners! I must have partners!
SICILIAN SAILOR
Aye; girls and a green!—then I’ll hop with ye; yea, turn grasshopper!
LONG-ISLAND SAILOR
Well, well, ye sulkies, there’s plenty more of us.
Hoe corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon.
Ah! here comes the music; now for it!
AZORE SAILOR (Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the
scuttle.) Here you are, Pip; and there’s the windlass-bits; up you mount!
Now, boys!
(The half of them dance to the tambourine; some go below; some sleep or
lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty.)
AZORE SAILOR (Dancing)
Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make
fire-flies; break the jinglers!
PIP
Jinglers, you say?—there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.
CHINA SAILOR
Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of thyself.
FRENCH SAILOR
Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it!
Split jibs! tear yourselves! Tashtego ( Quietly smoking.)
That’s a white man; he calls that fun: humph! I save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR
I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are dancing
over. I’ll dance over your grave, I will—that’s the bitterest threat of your
night-women, that beat head-winds round corners. O Christ! to think of the
green navies and the green-skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole
world’s a ball, as you scholars have it; and so ’tis right to make one ballroom
of it. Dance on, lads, you’re young; I was once.
3D NANTUCKET SAILOR
Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm—
give us a whiff, Tash.
(They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky darkens—
the wind rises.)
LASCAR SAILOR
By Brahma! boys, it’ll be douse sail soon. The sky-born, high-tide
Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR (Reclining and shaking his cap)
It’s the waves—the snow’s caps turn to jig it now. They’ll shake their
tassels soon. Now would all the waves were women, then I’d go drown, and
chassee with them evermore! There’s naught so sweet on earth—heaven
may not match it!— as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the
dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR (Reclining)
Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad—fleet interlacings of the limbs— lithe
swayings—coyings—flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze: unceasing touch
and go! not taste, observe ye, else come satiety. Eh, Pagan? (Nudging.)
TAHITAN SAILOR (Reclining on a mat)
Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls!—the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low
veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has
slid! I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye
thence; now worn and wilted quite. Ah me!—not thou nor I can bear the
change! How then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring
streams from Pirohitee’s peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and
drown the villages?—The blast, the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (Leaps to
his feet.)
PORTUGUESE SAILOR
How the sea rolls swashing ‘gainst the side! Stand by for reefing,
hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell they’ll go lunging
presently.
DANISH SAILOR
Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest! Well done!
The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He’s no more afraid than the isle fort at
Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on which the
sea-salt cakes!
4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR
He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him he must always
kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol— fire your
ship right into it!
ENGLISH SAILOR
Blood! but that old man’s a grand old cove! We are the lads to hunt him
up his whale!
ALL
Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR
How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of tree to live when
shifted to any other soil, and here there’s none but the crew’s cursed clay.
Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of weather when brave hearts
snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our captain has his birthmark;
look yonder, boys, there’s another in the sky lurid—like, ye see, all else
pitch black.
DAGGOO
What of that? Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me!
I’m quarried out of it!
SPANISH SAILOR
(Aside.) He wants to bully, ah!—the old grudge makes me touchy
(Advancing.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of
mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence.
DAGGOO (Grimly)
None.
ST. JAGO’S SAILOR
That Spaniard’s mad or drunk. But that can’t be, or else in his one case
our old Mogul’s fire-waters are somewhat long in working.
5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR
What’s that I saw—lightning? Yes.
SPANISH SAILOR
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
DAGGOO (Springing)
Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!
SPANISH SAILOR (Meeting him)
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!
ALL
A row! a row! a row!
TASHTEGO (With a whiff)
A row a’low, and a row aloft—Gods and men—both brawlers! Humph!
BELFAST SAILOR
A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row!
Plunge in with ye!
ENGLISH SAILOR
Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard’s knife! A ring, a ring!
OLD MANX SAILOR
Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel.
Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad’st thou the ring?
MATE’S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK
Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!
ALL
The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (They scatter.) PIP (Shrinking
under the windlass)
Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay!
Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal yard! It’s worse
than being in the whirled woods, the last day of the year! Who’d go
climbing after chestnuts now? But there they go, all cursing, and here I
don’t. Fine prospects to ’em; they’re on the road to heaven. Hold on hard!
Jimmini, what a squall! But those chaps there are worse yet— they are your
white squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I
heard all their chat just now, and the white whale—shirr! shirr!—but
spoken of once! and only this evening—it makes me jingle all over like my
tambourine— that anaconda of an old man swore ’em in to hunt him! Oh!
thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on
this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no
bowels to feel fear!
