CHAPTER 47
The Mat-Maker
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about
the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored 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 revelry 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 woof of marline between the long yarns
of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing
sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads,
and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove
home every yarn; I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over
the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of
the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself
were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There
lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning,
unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the
crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed
necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and
weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,
Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof
slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by
this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast
in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I,
which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy,
indifferent sword must be chance— aye, chance, free will, and necessity—
no wise incompatible— all interweavingly working together. The straight
warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course— its every
alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply
her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play
within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by
free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either,
and has the last featuring blow at events.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free
will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence that
voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-
Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand
stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his
cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard
all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high in
the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have
derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and
eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some
prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries
announcing their coming.
“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”
“Where-away?”
“On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!”
Instantly all was commotion.
The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and
reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other
tribes of his genus.
“There go flukes!” was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales
disappeared.
“Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! time!”
Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact
minute to Ahab.
The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling
before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to
leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of our
bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale when,
sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while concealed
beneath the surface, mills around, and swiftly swims off in the opposite
quarter—this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action; for there was
no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any way
alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selected for
shipkeepers—that is, those not appointed to the boats, by this time relieved
the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and mizzen had
come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust
out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over the sea like
three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager
crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly
poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war’s men about to
throw themselves on board an enemy’s ship.
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took every
eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was
surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.
