CHAPTER 97
The Lamp Had you descended from the Pequod’s try-works to the
Pequod’s forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single
moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some
illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in
their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of
lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens.
To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his
pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light,
so he lives in light. He makes his berth an Aladdin’s lamp, and lays him
down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s black hull still houses an
illumination.
See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps—
often but old bottles and vials, though—to the copper cooler at the
tryworks, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too,
the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a
fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as
early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of
its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up
his own supper of game.
