CHAPTER 58
Brit
Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows
of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale largely
feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to
be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat.
On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure
from the attack of a Sperm-Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws
sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of
that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated
from the water that escaped at the lips.
As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these
monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*
*That part of the sea known among whalemen as the “Brazil Banks” does
not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there
being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable
meadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually
floating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all
reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when they
paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more
like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the great hunting
countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass on the
plains recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking them
for bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who for
the first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea. And even
when recognized at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard
really to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be
instinct, in all parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse.
Indeed. in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep
with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old
naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in
the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the thing, this may very
well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean
furnish any fish that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the
dog? The accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear
comparative analogy to him.
But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas
have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling;
though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that
Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one
superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal
disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and
hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but
a moment’s consideration will teach that, however baby man may brag of
his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science
and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the
sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate
he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very
impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which
aboriginally belongs to it.
The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese
vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a
widow. That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked
ships of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah’s flood is not yet subsided; two
thirds of the fair world it yet covers.
Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a
miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews,
when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and
swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in precisely
the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.
But not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is
also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who
murdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath
spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her own
cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the rocks, and
leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no
power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed
that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe.
Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide
under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath
the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty
of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of
many species of sharks. Consider once more, the universal cannibalism of
the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war
since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile
earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a
strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean
surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular
Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half
known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never
return!
