-chapter 109.ahab and starbuck in the cabin. according to usage they were pumping theship next morning; and lo! no inconsiderable oil came up with the water;the casks below must have sprung a bad leak. much concern was shown; and starbuck wentdown into the cabin to report this
wood branding iron perth, unfavourable affair.* *in sperm-whalemen with any considerablequantity of oil on board, it is a regular semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into thehold, and drench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals, isremoved by the ship's pumps.
hereby the casks are sought to be keptdamply tight; while by the changed character of the withdrawn water, themariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo. now, from the south and west the pequod wasdrawing nigh to formosa and the bashee isles, between which lies one of thetropical outlets from the china waters into the pacific. and so starbuck found ahab with a generalchart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and another separate onerepresenting the long eastern coasts of the japanese islands--niphon, matsmai, andsikoke.
with his snow-white new ivory leg bracedagainst the screwed leg of his table, and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife inhis hand, the wondrous old man, with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling hisbrow, and tracing his old courses again. "who's there?" hearing the footstep at thedoor, but not turning round to it. "on deck! begone!""captain ahab mistakes; it is i. the oil in the hold is leaking, sir.we must up burtons and break out." "up burtons and break out? now that we are nearing japan; heave-tohere for a week to tinker a parcel of old
hoops?""either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good in a year. what we come twenty thousand miles to getis worth saving, sir." "so it is, so it is; if we get it.""i was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir." "and i was not speaking or thinking of thatat all. begone!let it leak! i'm all aleak myself. aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leakycasks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky
ship; and that's a far worse plight thanthe pequod's, man. yet i don't stop to plug my leak; for whocan find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in thislife's howling gale? starbuck! i'll not have the burtons hoisted.""what will the owners say, sir?" "let the owners stand on nantucket beachand outyell the typhoons. what cares ahab? owners, owners?thou art always prating to me, starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if theowners were my conscience.
but look ye, the only real owner ofanything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship's keel.--ondeck!" "captain ahab," said the reddening mate,moving further into the cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and cautiousthat it almost seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation of itself, but within alsoseemed more than half distrustful of itself; "a better man than i might wellpass over in thee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye, and ina happier, captain ahab." "devils!dost thou then so much as dare to
critically think of me?--on deck!" "nay, sir, not yet; i do entreat.and i do dare, sir--to be forbearing! shall we not understand each other betterthan hitherto, captain ahab?" ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack(forming part of most south-sea-men's cabin furniture), and pointing it towardsstarbuck, exclaimed: "there is one god that is lord over the earth, and one captainthat is lord over the pequod.--on deck!" for an instant in the flashing eyes of themate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really receivedthe blaze of the levelled tube. but, mastering his emotion, he half calmlyrose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused
for an instant and said: "thou hastoutraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that i ask thee not to beware of starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let ahab bewareof ahab; beware of thyself, old man." "he waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys;most careful bravery that!" murmured ahab, as starbuck disappeared. "what's that he said--ahab beware of ahab--there's something there!" then unconsciously using the musket for astaff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little cabin; but presently thethick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and returning the gun to the rack, he went tothe deck.
"thou art but too good a fellow, starbuck,"he said lowly to the mate; then raising his voice to the crew: "furl the t'gallant-sails, and close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up burton, andbreak out in the main-hold." it were perhaps vain to surmise exactly whyit was, that as respecting starbuck, ahab thus acted. it may have been a flash of honesty in him;or mere prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously forbade theslightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient, in the important chiefofficer of his ship. however it was, his orders were executed;and the burtons were hoisted.
chapter 110.queequeg in his coffin. upon searching, it was found that the caskslast struck into the hold were perfectly sound, and that the leak must be furtheroff. so, it being calm weather, they broke outdeeper and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and fromthat black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. so deep did they go; and so ancient, andcorroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost puncheons, that you almost lookednext for some mouldy corner-stone cask containing coins of captain noah, with
copies of the posted placards, vainlywarning the infatuated old world from the flood. tierce after tierce, too, of water, andbread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out,till at last the piled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over emptycatacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn.top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all aristotle in his head. well was it that the typhoons did not visitthem then.
now, at this time it was that my poor pagancompanion, and fast bosom-friend, queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought himnigh to his endless end. be it said, that in this vocation ofwhaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to becaptain, the higher you rise the harder you toil. so with poor queequeg, who, as harpooneer,must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but--as we have elsewhereseen--mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in thatsubterraneous confinement, resolutely
manhandle the clumsiest casks and see totheir stowage. to be short, among whalemen, theharpooneers are the holders, so called. poor queequeg! when the ship was about halfdisembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon himthere; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like agreen spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. and a well, or an ice-house, it somehowproved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings,he caught a terrible chill which lapsed
into a fever; and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, closeto the very sill of the door of death. how he wasted and wasted away in those fewlong-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his frame andtattooing. but as all else in him thinned, and hischeek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller andfuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondroustestimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened.
and like circles on the water, which, asthey grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like therings of eternity. an awe that cannot be named would stealover you as you sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things inhis face, as any beheld who were bystanders when zoroaster died. for whatever is truly wondrous and fearfulin man, never yet was put into words or books. and the drawing near of death, which alikelevels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from thedead could adequately tell.
so that--let us say it again--no dyingchaldee or greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysteriousshades you saw creeping over the face of poor queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemedgently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted himhigher and higher towards his destined heaven. not a man of the crew but gave him up; and,as for queequeg himself, what he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curiousfavour he asked. he called one to him in the grey morningwatch, when the day was just breaking, and
taking his hand, said that while innantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich war-wood of his native isle; and uponinquiry, he had learned that all whalemen who died in nantucket, were laid in thosesame dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the custom of his own race,who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so lefthim to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that farbeyond all visible horizons, their own
mild, uncontinented seas, interflow withthe blue heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. he added, that he shuddered at the thoughtof being buried in his hammock, according to the usual sea-custom, tossed likesomething vile to the death-devouring sharks. no: he desired a canoe like those ofnantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boatthese coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dimages.
now, when this strange circumstance wasmade known aft, the carpenter was at once commanded to do queequeg's bidding,whatever it might include. there was some heathenish, coffin-colouredold lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from theaboriginal groves of the lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin wasrecommended to be made. no sooner was the carpenter apprised of theorder, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent promptitude of hischaracter, proceeded into the forecastle and took queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking queequeg'sperson as he shifted the rule.
"ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now,"ejaculated the long island sailor. going to his vice-bench, the carpenter forconvenience sake and general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exactlength the coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting twonotches at its extremities. this done, he marshalled the planks and histools, and to work. when the last nail was driven, and the lidduly planed and fitted, he lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward withit, inquiring whether they were ready for it yet in that direction. overhearing the indignant but half-humorouscries with which the people on deck began
to drive the coffin away, queequeg, toevery one's consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to him, nor was there any denying him; seeingthat, of all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, sincethey will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to beindulged. leaning over in his hammock, queequeg longregarded the coffin with an attentive eye. he then called for his harpoon, had thewooden stock drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin alongwith one of the paddles of his boat. all by his own request, also, biscuits werethen ranged round the sides within: a flask
of fresh water was placed at the head, anda small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail- cloth being rolled up for a pillow,queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial ofits comforts, if any it had. he lay without moving a few minutes, thentold one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, yojo. then crossing his arms on his breast withyojo between, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed over him. the head part turned over with a leatherhinge, and there lay queequeg in his coffin
with little but his composed countenance inview. "rarmai" (it will do; it is easy), hemurmured at last, and signed to be replaced in his hammock. but ere this was done, pip, who had beenslily hovering near by all this while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with softsobbings, took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine. "poor rover! will ye never have done withall this weary roving? where go ye now? but if the currents carry ye to those sweetantilles where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one littleerrand for me?
seek out one pip, who's now been missinglong: i think he's in those far antilles. if ye find him, then comfort him; for hemust be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;--i found it. rig-a-dig, dig, dig!now, queequeg, die; and i'll beat ye your dying march." "i have heard," murmured starbuck, gazingdown the scuttle, "that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancienttongues; and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancienttongues had been really spoken in their
hearing by some lofty scholars. so, to my fond faith, poor pip, in thisstrange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenlyhomes. where learned he that, but there?--hark! hespeaks again: but more wildly now." "form two and two!let's make a general of him! ho, where's his harpoon? lay it across here.--rig-a-dig, dig, dig!huzza! oh for a game cock now to sit upon his headand crow! queequeg dies game!--mind ye that; queequegdies game!--take ye good heed of that;
queequeg dies game! i say; game, game, game! but base littlepip, he died a coward; died all a'shiver;-- out upon pip! hark ye; if ye find pip, tell all theantilles he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward!tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! i'd never beat my tambourine over base pip,and hail him general, if he were once more dying here.no, no! shame upon all cowards--shame upon them! let 'em go drown like pip, that jumped froma whale-boat.
shame! shame!"during all this, queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. pip was led away, and the sick man wasreplaced in his hammock. but now that he had apparently made everypreparation for death; now that his coffin was proved a good fit, queequeg suddenlyrallied; soon there seemed no need of the carpenter's box: and thereupon, when some expressed their delighted surprise, he, insubstance, said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;--at acritical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving
undone; and therefore had changed his mindabout dying: he could not die yet, he averred. they asked him, then, whether to live ordie was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure.he answered, certainly. in a word, it was queequeg's conceit, thatif a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but awhale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer ofthat sort. now, there is this noteworthy differencebetween savage and civilized; that while a sick, civilized man may be six monthsconvalescing, generally speaking, a sick
savage is almost half-well again in a day. so, in good time my queequeg gainedstrength; and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (buteating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms and legs, gave himself a goodstretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his hoistedboat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight. with a wild whimsiness, he now used hiscoffin for a sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them inorder there.
many spare hours he spent, in carving thelid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby hewas striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. and this tattooing had been the work of adeparted prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, hadwritten out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attainingtruth; so that queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrouswork in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own
live heart beat against them; and thesemysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the livingparchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. and this thought it must have been whichsuggested to ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away fromsurveying poor queequeg--"oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!" chapter 111.the pacific. when gliding by the bashee isles we emergedat last upon the great south sea; were it not for other things, i could have greetedmy dear pacific with uncounted thanks, for
now the long supplication of my youth was answered; that serene ocean rolledeastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue. there is, one knows not what sweet mysteryabout this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soulbeneath; like those fabled undulations of the ephesian sod over the buried evangelistst. john. and meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and potters' fields of all four continents, thewaves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of
mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams,somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming,still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so bytheir restlessness. to any meditative magian rover, this serenepacific, once beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. it rolls the midmost waters of the world,the indian ocean and atlantic being but its arms. the same waves wash the moles of the new-built californian towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men, andlave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of
asiatic lands, older than abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coralisles, and low-lying, endless, unknown archipelagoes, and impenetrable japans. thus this mysterious, divine pacific zonesthe world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. lifted by those eternal swells, you needsmust own the seductive god, bowing your head to pan. but few thoughts of pan stirred ahab'sbrain, as standing like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizenrigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly
snuffed the sugary musk from the bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild loversmust be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of thenew found sea; that sea in which the hated white whale must even then be swimming. launched at length upon these almost finalwaters, and gliding towards the japanese cruising-ground, the old man's purposeintensified itself. his firm lips met like the lips of a vice;the delta of his forehead's veins swelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep,his ringing cry ran through the vaulted hull, "stern all! the white whale spoutsthick blood!"
chapter 112.the blacksmith. availing himself of the mild, summer-coolweather that now reigned in these latitudes, and in preparation for thepeculiarly active pursuits shortly to be anticipated, perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removed hisportable forge to the hold again, after concluding his contributory work for ahab'sleg, but still retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost incessantly invoked by theheadsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do some little job for them; altering, orrepairing, or new shaping their various
weapons and boat furniture. often he would be surrounded by an eagercircle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads, harpoons, andlances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he toiled. nevertheless, this old man's was a patienthammer wielded by a patient arm. no murmur, no impatience, no petulance didcome from him. silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over stillfurther his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were life itself,and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of his heart.
and so it was.--most miserable!a peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing yawing in hisgait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the curiosity of the mariners. and to the importunity of their persistedquestionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass that every one now knewthe shameful story of his wretched fate. belated, and not innocently, one bitterwinter's midnight, on the road running between two country towns, the blacksmithhalf-stupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in aleaning, dilapidated barn. the issue was, the loss of the extremitiesof both feet.
out of this revelation, part by part, atlast came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yetuncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his life's drama. he was an old man, who, at the age ofnearly sixty, had postponedly encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals calledruin. he had been an artisan of famed excellence,and with plenty to do; owned a house and garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like,loving wife, and three blithe, ruddy children; every sunday went to a cheerful-looking church, planted in a grove. but one night, under cover of darkness, andfurther concealed in a most cunning
disguisement, a desperate burglar slid intohis happy home, and robbed them all of everything. and darker yet to tell, the blacksmithhimself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into his family's heart.it was the bottle conjuror! upon the opening of that fatal cork, forthflew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. now, for prudent, most wise, and economicreasons, the blacksmith's shop was in the basement of his dwelling, but with aseparate entrance to it; so that always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but withvigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of
her young-armed old husband's hammer; whosereverberations, muffled by passing through the floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery; and so, to stoutlabor's iron lullaby, the blacksmith's infants were rocked to slumber.oh, woe on woe! oh, death, why canst thou not sometimes betimely? hadst thou taken this old blacksmith tothyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a deliciousgrief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killingcompetency.
but death plucked down some virtuous elderbrother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of someother family, and left the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him easier toharvest. why tell the whole? the blows of the basement hammer every daygrew more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last; thewife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellowsfell; the forge choked up with cinders; the
house was sold; the mother dived down intothe long church-yard grass; her children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered offa vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn toflaxen curls! death seems the only desirable sequel for acareer like this; but death is only a launching into the region of the strangeuntried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense remote, the wild, the watery, the unshored;therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them someinterior compunctions against suicide, does
the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain ofunimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and fromthe hearts of infinite pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them--"come hither, broken-hearted; here is anotherlife without the guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural,without dying for them. come hither! bury thyself in a life which,to your now equally abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. come hither! put up thy gravestone, too,within the churchyard, and come hither,
till we marry thee!" hearkening to these voices, east and west,by early sunrise, and by fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, aye, i come!and so perth went a-whaling. chapter 113.the forge. with matted beard, and swathed in abristling shark-skin apron, about mid-day, perth was standing between his forge andanvil, the latter placed upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with the other at hisforge's lungs, when captain ahab came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag.
while yet a little distance from the forge,moody ahab paused; till at last, perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, beganhammering it upon the anvil--the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hoveringflights, some of which flew close to ahab. "are these thy mother carey's chickens,perth? they are always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;--look here, they burn; but thou--thou liv'st among them without a scorch." "because i am scorched all over, captainahab," answered perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; "i am past scorching; noteasily can'st thou scorch a scar." "well, well; no more.
thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanelywoeful to me. in no paradise myself, i am impatient ofall misery in others that is not mad. thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, whydost thou not go mad? how can'st thou endure without being mad? do the heavens yet hate thee, that thoucan'st not go mad?--what wert thou making there?""welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it." "and can'st thou make it all smooth again,blacksmith, after such hard usage as it had?""i think so, sir."
"and i suppose thou can'st smoothe almostany seams and dents; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?""aye, sir, i think i can; all seams and dents but one." "look ye here, then," cried ahab,passionately advancing, and leaning with both hands on perth's shoulders; "look yehere--here--can ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith," sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow; "if thou could'st,blacksmith, glad enough would i lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviesthammer between my eyes. answer!
can'st thou smoothe this seam?""oh! that is the one, sir! said i not all seams and dents but one?" "aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man,it is unsmoothable; for though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has workeddown into the bone of my skull--that is all wrinkles! but, away with child's play; no more gaffsand pikes to-day. look ye here!" jingling the leathern bag,as if it were full of gold coins. "i, too, want a harpoon made; one that athousand yoke of fiends could not part, perth; something that will stick in a whalelike his own fin-bone.
there's the stuff," flinging the pouch uponthe anvil. "look ye, blacksmith, these are thegathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses." "horse-shoe stubbs, sir?why, captain ahab, thou hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff weblacksmiths ever work." "i know it, old man; these stubbs will weldtogether like glue from the melted bones of murderers.quick! forge me the harpoon. and forge me first, twelve rods for itsshank; then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve together like the yarns andstrands of a tow-line.
quick! i'll blow the fire."when at last the twelve rods were made, ahab tried them, one by one, by spirallingthem, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. "a flaw!" rejecting the last one."work that over again, perth." this done, perth was about to begin weldingthe twelve into one, when ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. as, then, with regular, gasping hems, hehammered on the anvil, perth passing to him the glowing rods, one after the other, andthe hard pressed forge shooting up its
intense straight flame, the parsee passed silently, and bowing over his head towardsthe fire, seemed invoking some curse or some blessing on the toil.but, as ahab looked up, he slid aside. "what's that bunch of lucifers dodgingabout there for?" muttered stubb, looking on from the forecastle. "that parsee smells fire like a fusee; andsmells of it himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan." at last the shank, in one complete rod,received its final heat; and as perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into thecask of water near by, the scalding steam
shot up into ahab's bent face. "would'st thou brand me, perth?" wincingfor a moment with the pain; "have i been but forging my own branding-iron, then?""pray god, not that; yet i fear something, captain ahab. is not this harpoon for the white whale?""for the white fiend! but now for the barbs; thou must make themthyself, man. here are my razors--the best of steel;here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the icy sea." for a moment, the old blacksmith eyed therazors as though he would fain not use
them. "take them, man, i have no need for them;for i now neither shave, sup, nor pray till--but here--to work!" fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, andwelded by perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and asthe blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to ahab to place the water-casknear. "no, no--no water for that; i want it ofthe true death-temper. ahoy, there!
tashtego, queequeg, daggoo!what say ye, pagans! will ye give me as much blood as will coverthis barb?" holding it high up. a cluster of dark nods replied, yes. three punctures were made in the heathenflesh, and the white whale's barbs were then tempered. "ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sedin nomine diaboli!" deliriously howled ahab, as the malignant iron scorchinglydevoured the baptismal blood. now, mustering the spare poles from below,and selecting one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, ahab fitted the end tothe socket of the iron.
a coil of new tow-line was then unwound,and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. pressing his foot upon it, till the ropehummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings,ahab exclaimed, "good! and now for the seizings." at one extremity the rope was unstranded,and the separate spread yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of theharpoon; the pole was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope was traced half-way along the pole'slength, and firmly secured so, with
intertwistings of twine. this done, pole, iron, and rope--like thethree fates--remained inseparable, and ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; thesound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringingalong every plank. but ere he entered his cabin, light,unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was heard. oh, pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle butunresting eye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the blacktragedy of the melancholy ship, and mocked it!
