CHAPTER 127
The Deck
The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open
hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted oakum
slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.—
Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip following him.
Back lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes!
Not this hand complies with my humor more genially than that boy.—
Middle aisle of a church! What’s here?”
“Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir!
Beware the hatchway!”
“Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.”
“Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does.”
“Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy
shop?”
“I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?”
“Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?”
“Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but
they’ve set me now to turning it into something else.”
“Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
monopolizing, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the
next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those same
coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a jack-of-all-
trades.”
“But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.”
“The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in hand.
Dost thou never?”
“Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I’m indifferent enough, sir, for that; but the
reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was
none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it.”
“Aye, and that’s because the lid there’s a sounding-board; and what in all
things makes the sounding-board is this— there’s naught beneath. And yet,
a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter. Hast thou
ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against the churchyard
gate, going in?
“Faith, sir, I’ve-”
“Faith? What’s that?”
“Why, faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like— that’s all, sir.”
“Um, um; go on.”
“I was about to say, sir, that-”
“Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.”
“He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes. I’ve heard that the Isle of Albermarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut
by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts
yon old man, too, right in his middle. He’s always under the Line—fiery
hot, I tell ye! He’s looking this way—come, oakum; quick. Here we go
again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I’m the professor of musical
glasses—tap, tap!”
(Ahab to himself)
“There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The greyheaded wood-pecker tapping
the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing
rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow.
Rat-tat! So man’s seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What
things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here now’s the very
dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of
the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it
go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but
an immortality-preserver! I’ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the
dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but
uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that
accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return
again. Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous
philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds
must empty into thee!”
