CHAPTER 81
The Pequod Meets The Virgin
The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship
Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.
At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and
Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide intervals
of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with their flag in the
Pacific.
For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects.
While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and dropping a
boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the bows
instead of the stern.
“What has he in his hand there?” cried Starbuck, pointing to something
wavingly held by the German. “Impossible!—a lamp-feeder!”
“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he’s
coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don’t you see that big tin
can there alongside of him?—that’s his boiling water. Oh! he’s all right, is
the Yarman.”
“Go along with you,” cried Flask, “it’s a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.
He’s out of oil, and has come a-begging.”
However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the
whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old
proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing
really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did
indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.
As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all
heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German soon
evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately turning
the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some remarks
touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in profound darkness
—his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a single flying-fish yet
captured to supply the deficiency; concluding by hinting that his ship was
indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a clean one (that is, an
empty one), well deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.
His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his ship’s
side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the mast-heads
of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that without pausing
to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed round his boat and
made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.
Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German
boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod’s
keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger, they
were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind, rubbing
their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness. They left a
great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great wide parchment
upon the sea.
Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,
humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as by
the unusual yellowish incrustations over-growing him, seemed afflicted
with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged to
the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such
venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake,
though indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the white-
bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed
when two hostile currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious;
coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds,
followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to
have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters behind him to
upbubble.
“Who’s got some paregoric?” said Stubb, “he has the stomach-ache,
I’m afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache!
Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys.
It’s the first foul wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look,
did ever whale yaw so before? it must be, he’s lost his tiller.”
As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck
load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her way; so
did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly turning
over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious wake in the
unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost that fin in battle,
or had been born without it, it were hard to say.
“Only wait a bit, old chap, and I’ll give ye a sling for that wounded arm,”
cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.
“Mind he don’t sling thee with it,” cried Starbuck. “Give way, or the
German will have him.”
With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this one
fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most valuable
whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were going with
such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time. At this
juncture, the Pequod’s keels had shot by the three German boats last
lowered; but from the great start he had had, Derick’s boat still led the
chase, though every moment neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing
they feared, was, that from being already so nigh to his mark, he would be
enabled to dart his iron before they could completely overtake and pass
him. As for Derick, he seemed quite confident that this would be the case,
and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other
boats.
“The ungracious and ungrateful dog!” cried Starbuck; “he mocks and
dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!”—
Then in his old intense whisper—”give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!”
“I tell ye what it is, men”—cried Stubb to his crew—It’s against my
religion to get mad; but I’d like to eat that villainous Yarman—Pull— won’t
ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love brandy? A hogshead
of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why don’t some of ye burst a blood-
vessel? Who’s that been dropping an anchor overboard— we don’t budge an
inch—we’re becalmed. Halloo, here’s grass growing in the boat’s bottom—
and by the Lord, the mast there’s budding. This won’t do, boys. Look at that
Yarman! The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?”
“Oh! see the suds he makes!” cried Flask, dancing up and down—”What
a hump—Oh, do pile on the beef—lays like a log! Oh! my lads, do spring—
slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads— baked clams and
muffins—oh, do, do, spring,—he’s a hundred barreler— don’t lose him now
—don’t oh, don’t!—see that Yarman—Oh, won’t ye pull for your duff, my
lads—such a sog! such a sogger! Don’t ye love sperm? There goes three
thousand dollars, men!—a bank!—a whole bank! The bank of England!—
Oh, do, do, do!—What’s that Yarman about now?”
At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the
advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view of
retarding his rivals’ way, and at the same time economically accelerating his
own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.
“The unmannerly Dutch dogger!” cried Stubb. “Pull now, men, like fifty
thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d’ye say,
Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces for
the honor of old Gayhead? What d’ye say?”
“I say, pull like god-dam,”—cried the Indian.
Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Pequod’s
three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed,
momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of the
headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up proudly,
occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry of, “There
she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze! Down with the Yarman!
Sail over him!”
But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all their
gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not a righteous
judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade of his
midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to free his white-
ash, and while, in consequence, Derick’s boat was nigh to capsizing, and he
thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;—that was a good time for
Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they took a mortal start forwards,
and slantingly ranged up on the German’s quarter. An instant more, and all
four boats were diagonically in the whale’s immediate wake, while
stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.
It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now
going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented
jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this
hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow
that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards
the sky his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making
affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical
hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known
her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and
enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his
spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in
his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to
appal the stoutest man who so pitied.
Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod’s
boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick
chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart,
ere the last chance would for ever escape.
But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three
tigers—Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo—instinctively sprang to their feet,
and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; and
darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket irons
entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and white-fire! The three boats,
in the first fury of the whale’s headlong rush, bumped the German’s aside
with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled
out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.
“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,” cried Stubb, casting a passing glance
upon them as he shot by; “ye’ll be picked up presently— all right—I saw
some sharks astern—St. Bernard’s dogs, you know— relieve distressed
travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam!
Hurrah!—Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar! This
puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain— makes
the wheelspokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way; and there’s
danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the
way a fellow feels when he’s going to Davy Jones—all a rush down an
endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!”
But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he
tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round the
loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them; while so
fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust
the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caught repeated smoking
turns with the rope to hold on; till at last—owing to the perpendicular strain
from the lead-lined chocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went
straight down into the blue—the gunwales of the bows were almost even
with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale
soon ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful
of expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But though
boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this “holding on,”
as it is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the
back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again to
meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it
is to be doubted whether this course is always the best; for it is but
reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken whale stays under water,
the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the enormous surface of him—
in a full grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square feet— the
pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishing
atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here, above-ground,
in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on his back a
column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least equal the weight
of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty
line-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on board.
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into
its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so
much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would
have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster
of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of
perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three
such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to
an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this
the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said—”Canst thou fill his
skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that
layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he
esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted
as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!” This the creature? this
he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with the strength
of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the
mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod’s fishspears!
In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sent
down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad enough
to shade half Xerxes’ army. Who can tell how appalling to the wounded
whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!
“Stand by, men; he stirs,” cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly
vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by
magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every
oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in a great part
from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce
upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are
scared from it into the sea.
“Haul in! Haul in!” cried Starbuck again; “he’s rising.”
The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand’s breadth
could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all
dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two ship’s
length of the hunters.
His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land
animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins,
whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut
off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it
is, to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that
when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at
once begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is heightened by
the extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his
life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the
quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains,
that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even
as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-
off and indiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this
whale, and perilously drew over his swaying flukes, and the lances were
darted into him, they were followed by steady jets from the new made
wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his
head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture
into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of
him had thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was
untouched.
As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of
his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed.
His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were beheld. As
strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when
prostrate, so from the points which the whale’s eyes had once occupied,
now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none.
For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the
death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-
makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach
unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last
he partially disclosed a strangely discolored bunch or protuberance, the size
of a bushel, low down on the flank.
“A nice spot,” cried Flask; “just let me prick him there once.”
“Avast!” cried Starbuck, “there’s no need of that!”
But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an ulcerous
jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more than sufferable
anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted
at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews all over with
showers of gore, capsizing Flask’s boat and marring the bows. It was his
death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he
helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side,
impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly
revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay
like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when
by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty
fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column
lowers and lowers to the ground— so the last long dying spout of the whale.
Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body
showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately, by
Starbuck’s orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so that ere
long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a few
inches beneath them by the cords. By very heedful management, when the
ship drew nigh, the whale was transferred to her side, and was strongly
secured there by the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless
artificially upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom.
It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade, the
entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the
lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are
frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh
perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any kind to denote
their place; therefore, there must needs have been some other unknown
reason in the present case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But
still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone being found in him,
not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had
darted that stone lance? And when? It might have been darted by some Nor’
West Indian long before America was discovered.
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous
cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries,
by the ship’s being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea,
owing to the body’s immensely increasing tendency to sink. However,
Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the last; hung on
to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship would have been
capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with the body; then, when the
command was given to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain
upon the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened,
that it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod
was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the
steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the
ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places,
by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought to
bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the
timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends
could not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of
ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the
point of going over.
“Hold on, hold on, won’t ye?” cried Stubb to the body, “don’t be in such a
devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something or go for
it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes, and run one of ye
for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains.”
“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter’s heavy
hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing at the
largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were given, when the
exceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific snap, every fastening went
adrift; the ship righted, the carcase sank.
Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy,
with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If the only
whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their
pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you
might with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon
specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of
buoyant matter in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest
health, and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm
flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them! even these
brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.
Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this
accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty
Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no
small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale; his
Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this
incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances
where, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale
again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is obvious.
Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes a
sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under
then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand,
when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with
plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to
look for it when it shall have ascended again.
It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from the
Pequod’s mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering her
boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to
the species of uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of
swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back’s spout is so similar to the Sperm
Whale’s, that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And
consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant chase of this
unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made after her four young
keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful
chase.
Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
