Chapter 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 overgrowing 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 barreller—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 wheel-spokes 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 fish-spears!

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 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 lengths 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 undiscernible 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 discoloured 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.