Bab Bab 126 · The Life-Buoy.

Steering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, and her progress

solely determined by Ahab’s level log and line; the Pequod held on her

path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such

unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways

impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all

these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and

desperate scene.

At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the

Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before

the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch—then

headed by Flask—was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and

unearthly—like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod’s

murdered Innocents—that one and all, they started from their reveries,

and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all

transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild

cry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the

crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers

remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman—the oldest mariner of

all—declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the

voices of newly drowned men in the sea.

Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when he

came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not

unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus

explained the wonder.

Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great

numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or

some dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and

kept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of

wail. But this only the more affected some of them, because most

mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not

only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the

human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen

peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain

circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men.

But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible

confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At

sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;

and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for

sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus

with the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may, he had

not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard—a cry and a

rushing—and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and

looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the

sea.

The life-buoy—a long slender cask—was dropped from the stern, where it

always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to seize it,

and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so that it

slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its every pore; and

the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to

yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.

And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out

for the White Whale, on the White Whale’s own peculiar ground; that man

was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the

time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at

least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of

evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged.

They declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they

had heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said nay.

The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to see

to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as in

the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the

voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly

connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be;

therefore, they were going to leave the ship’s stern unprovided with a

buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg hinted a

hint concerning his coffin.

“A life-buoy of a coffin!” cried Starbuck, starting.

“Rather queer, that, I should say,” said Stubb.

“It will make a good enough one,” said Flask, “the carpenter here can

arrange it easily.”

“Bring it up; there’s nothing else for it,” said Starbuck, after a

melancholy pause. “Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so—the coffin,

I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it.”

“And shall I nail down the lid, sir?” moving his hand as with a hammer.

“Aye.”

“And shall I caulk the seams, sir?” moving his hand as with a

caulking-iron.

“Aye.”

“And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?” moving his hand

as with a pitch-pot.

“Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and

no more.—Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me.”

“He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he

baulks. Now I don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he

wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he

won’t put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with

that coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It’s like

turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I

don’t like this cobbling sort of business—I don’t like it at all; it’s

undignified; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats do tinkerings; we

are their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin,

fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins at

the beginning, and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at

the conclusion; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in the middle,

and at the beginning at the end. It’s the old woman’s tricks to be

giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all old women have for

tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who ran away with a

bald-headed young tinker once. And that’s the reason I never would work

for lonely widow old women ashore, when I kept my job-shop in the

Vineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run

off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let

me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with

pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over

the ship’s stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some

superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere

they would do the job. But I’m made of knotty Aroostook hemlock; I

don’t budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing about with a grave-yard

tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make bridal-bedsteads and

card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We work by the month, or

by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore

of our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling, and then we stash it

if we can. Hem! I’ll do the job, now, tenderly. I’ll have me—let’s

see—how many in the ship’s company, all told? But I’ve forgotten. Any

way, I’ll have me thirty separate, Turk’s-headed life-lines, each three

feet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down,

there’ll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight

not seen very often beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron,

pitch-pot, and marling-spike! Let’s to it.”