Kabanata Kabanata 71 · The Jeroboam’s Story.

Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than

the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.

By and by, through the glass the stranger’s boats and manned mast-heads

proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and

shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the

Pequod could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what

response would be made.

Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships

of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which

signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective

vessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale

commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at

considerable distances and with no small facility.

The Pequod’s signal was at last responded to by the stranger’s setting

her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket.

Squaring her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod’s lee,

and lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was

being rigged by Starbuck’s order to accommodate the visiting captain,

the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat’s stern in token

of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that the

Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her

captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod’s company. For, though

himself and boat’s crew remained untainted, and though his ship was

half a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and

flowing between; yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine

of the land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with

the Pequod.

But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an

interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam’s

boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to

the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it

blew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times

by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed

some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper

bearings again. Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now

and then, a conversation was sustained between the two parties; but at

intervals not without still another interruption of a very different

sort.

Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam’s boat, was a man of a singular

appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual

notabilities make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish

man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant

yellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut

tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on

his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had

exclaimed—“That’s he! that’s he!—the long-togged scaramouch the

Town-Ho’s company told us of!” Stubb here alluded to a strange story

told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time

previous when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account

and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in

question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the

Jeroboam. His story was this:

He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna

Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret

meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a

trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he

carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing

gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange,

apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket,

where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady,

common-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate

for the Jeroboam’s whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway

upon the ship’s getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in

a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded

the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby he

set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and

vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which

he declared these things;—the dark, daring play of his sleepless,

excited imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real

delirium, united to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of

the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they

were afraid of him. As such a man, however, was not of much practical

use in the ship, especially as he refused to work except when he

pleased, the incredulous captain would fain have been rid of him; but

apprised that that individual’s intention was to land him in the first

convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and

vials—devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in

case this intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his

disciples among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the

captain and told him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of

them would remain. He was therefore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor

would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or do what he

would; so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of

the ship. The consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared

little or nothing for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had

broken out, he carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the

plague, as he called it, was at his sole command; nor should it be

stayed but according to his good pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor

devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in obedience to

his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god.

Such things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true.

Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the

measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless

power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But it is time to

return to the Pequod.

“I fear not thy epidemic, man,” said Ahab from the bulwarks, to Captain

Mayhew, who stood in the boat’s stern; “come on board.”

But now Gabriel started to his feet.

“Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible

plague!”

“Gabriel! Gabriel!” cried Captain Mayhew; “thou must either—” But that

instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings

drowned all speech.

“Hast thou seen the White Whale?” demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted

back.

“Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the

horrible tail!”

“I tell thee again, Gabriel, that—” But again the boat tore ahead as if

dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a

succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional

caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the

hoisted sperm whale’s head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was

seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel

nature seemed to warrant.

When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story

concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from

Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed

leagued with him.

It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking

a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of

Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this

intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the

White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering

insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the

Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some

year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the

mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him;

and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the

opportunity, despite all the archangel’s denunciations and

forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat.

With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many

perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron

fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was

tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of

speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while

Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat’s bow, and with all the

reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon the

whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a

broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion,

temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next

instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily

into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea

at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was

harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman’s head; but the mate for ever sank.

It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the

Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.

Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;

oftener the boat’s bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the

headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body. But

strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one,

when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is

discernible; the man being stark dead.

The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly

descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek—“The vial! the vial!”

Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of

the whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with added

influence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had

specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general

prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one

of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror

to the ship.

Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to him,

that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he

intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which

Ahab answered—“Aye.” Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started to

his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with

downward pointed finger—“Think, think of the blasphemer—dead, and down

there!—beware of the blasphemer’s end!”

Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, “Captain, I have just

bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy

officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag.”

Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various

ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,

depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans.

Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received

after attaining an age of two or three years or more.

Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely

tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in

consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a

letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy.

“Can’st not read it?” cried Ahab. “Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it’s but

a dim scrawl;—what’s this?” As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a

long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to

insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without

its coming any closer to the ship.

Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, “Mr. Har—yes, Mr. Harry—(a

woman’s pinny hand,—the man’s wife, I’ll wager)—Aye—Mr. Harry Macey,

Ship Jeroboam;—why it’s Macey, and he’s dead!”

“Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife,” sighed Mayhew; “but let

me have it.”

“Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou art soon going

that way.”

“Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain Mayhew, stand by now to

receive it”; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s hands, he

caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the

boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing;

the boat drifted a little towards the ship’s stern; so that, as if by

magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel’s eager hand. He

clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the

letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab’s

feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their

oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the

Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket

of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild

affair.