Kabanata Kabanata 34 · The Cabin-Table.

It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale

loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord

and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking

an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on

the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on

the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the

tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But

presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the

deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, “Dinner, Mr.

Starbuck,” disappears into the cabin.

When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, and Starbuck,

the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then

Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks,

and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of

pleasantness, “Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and descends the scuttle. The second

Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the

main brace, to see whether it will be all right with that important

rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid “Dinner,

Mr. Flask,” follows after his predecessors.

But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,

seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all

sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his

shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right

over the Grand Turk’s head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching

his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so

far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other

processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into

the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and,

then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab’s presence,

in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.

It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense

artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck

some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and

defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those

very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that

same commander’s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say

deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the

table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this

difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of

Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously,

therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he

who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own

private dinner-table of invited guests, that man’s unchallenged power

and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man’s royalty

of state transcends Belshazzar’s, for Belshazzar was not the greatest.

Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Cæsar.

It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding.

Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a

ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that

peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.

Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion

on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still

deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be

served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab,

there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind,

their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s knife, as he carved

the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they

would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even

upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when reaching out his

knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab

thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards him, the mate received his

meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little

started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed

it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like

the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor

profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals

were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old

Ahab forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief

it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold

below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy

of this weary family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef;

his would have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help

himself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the

first degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never

more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world;

nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask

helped himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it.

Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he

thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its

clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so

long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and

therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas!

was a butterless man!

Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask

is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask’s dinner was badly

jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him;

and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb

even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small

appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask

must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that

day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the

deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever

since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he

had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less.

For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal

in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed

from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of

old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before

the mast. There’s the fruits of promotion now; there’s the vanity of

glory: there’s the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any

mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask’s

official capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample

vengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask

through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before

awful Ahab.

Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table

in the Pequod’s cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted

order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was

restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the

three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary

legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants’ hall of the high and

mighty cabin.

In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless

invisible domineerings of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free

license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior

fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid

of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed

their food with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined

like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading

with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that

to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale

Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly

quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he

did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an

ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back,

harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted

Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head

into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand,

began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was

naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this

bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital

nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab,

and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages,

Dough-Boy’s whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after

seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he

would escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and

fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was

over.

It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing

his filed teeth to the Indian’s: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on

the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the

low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low

cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in

a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious,

not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively

small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so

broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage

fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through

his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by

beef or by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a

mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating—an ugly sound enough—so

much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any

marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear

Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might

be picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery

hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor

did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for

their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner,

they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did

not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget

that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been

guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy!

hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin

should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his

great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to

his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling

in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.

But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived

there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were

scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time,

when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.

In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale

captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights

the ship’s cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that

anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth,

the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to

have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it

was something as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for a

moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing,

residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin

was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally

included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He

lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled

Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan

of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the

winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old

age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed

upon the sullen paws of its gloom!