Bab Bab 7 · The Chapel.

In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and few are

the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who

fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this

special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving

sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called

bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found

a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors’ wives and

widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks

of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart

from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and

incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these

silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble

tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the

pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not

pretend to quote:—

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was

lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, _November_

1_st_, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN,

WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats’

crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the

Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, _December_ 31_st_, 1839. THIS MARBLE

Is here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows

of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, _August_

3_d_, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated

myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see

Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a

wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage

was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because

he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading

those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of

the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation,

I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery,

and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not

the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here

before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of

those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed

afresh.

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing

among flowers can say—here, _here_ lies my beloved; ye know not the

desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in

those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in

those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden

infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse

resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a

grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as

here.

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;

why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no

tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is

that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix

so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if

he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the

Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what

eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies

antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we

still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are

dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all

the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify

a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these

dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a

Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky

light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who

had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But

somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine

chance for promotion, it seems—aye, a stove boat will make me an

immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a

speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what

then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.

Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true

substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too

much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking

that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees

of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is

not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat

and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.