Chapter Chapter 35 · The Mast-Head.

It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the

other seamen my first mast-head came round.

In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost

simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may

have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper

cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she

is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her—say, an empty vial

even—then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her

skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether

relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a

very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate

here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old

Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.

For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by

their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia,

or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great

stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the

dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel

builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a

nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general

belief among archæologists, that the first pyramids were founded for

astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar

stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with

prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were

wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the

look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing

in sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times,

who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole

latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the

ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a

dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his

place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing

everything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern

standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron,

and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale,

are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon

discovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of

the column of Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and

fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks below;

whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great

Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in

Baltimore, and like one of Hercules’ pillars, his column marks that

point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral

Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in

Trafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London smoke,

token is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is

smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor

Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to

befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze;

however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the

thick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be

shunned.

It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head

standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not

so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole

historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us,

that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly

launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected

lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by

means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house.

A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New

Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned

boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we

then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The

three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen

taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other

every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly

pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is

delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks,

striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while

beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters

of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous

Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of

the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship

indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you

into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime

uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras

with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into

unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt

securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what

you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more

are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years’

voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the

mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be

deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion

of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of

anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a

comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock,

a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small

and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your

most usual point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, where you

stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen)

called the t’ gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the

beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull’s horns. To

be sure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in

the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest

watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul

is glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about

in it, nor even move out of it, without running great risk of perishing

(like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a

watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or

additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of

drawers in your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of

your watch-coat.

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a

southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or

pulpits, called _crow’s-nests_, in which the look-outs of a Greenland

whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In

the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled “A Voyage among the

Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the

re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;” in this

admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a

charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented

_crow’s-nest_ of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet’s

good craft. He called it the _Sleet’s crow’s-nest_, in honor of

himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all

ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children

after our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and

patentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other

apparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet’s crow’s-nest is something

like a large tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is

furnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head

in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into

it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or

side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker

underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather

rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and

other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his

mast-head in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a

rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask

and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or

vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot

successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the

water, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it

was plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does,

all the little detailed conveniences of his crow’s-nest; but though he

so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very

scientific account of his experiments in this crow’s-nest, with a small

compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors

resulting from what is called the “local attraction” of all binnacle

magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in

the ship’s planks, and in the Glacier’s case, perhaps, to there having

been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though

the Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his

learned “binnacle deviations,” “azimuth compass observations,” and

“approximate errors,” he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was

not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail

being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little

case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow’s nest, within

easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and

even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it

very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle,

seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while

with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics

aloft there in that bird’s nest within three or four perches of the

pole.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as

Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is

greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those

seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used

to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a

chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there;

then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the

top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so

at last mount to my ultimate destination.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept

but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how

could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering

altitude—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all

whale-ships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing out

every time.”

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of

Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with

lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who

offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware

of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be

killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes

round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor

are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery

furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded

young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking

sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches

himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship,

and in moody phrase ejaculates:—

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand

blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.”

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young

philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient

“interest” in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost

to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would

rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young

Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are

short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have

left their opera-glasses at home.

“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve been

cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale

yet. Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up here.”

Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in

the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of

vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending

cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity;

takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep,

blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange,

half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every

dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him

the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by

continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit

ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space;

like Cranmer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of

every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a

gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from

the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on

ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your

identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And

perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled

shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no

more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!