Bab Bab 78 · Cistern and Buckets.

Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect

posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the

part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried

with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts,

travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that

it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it

is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down

the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he

lands on the summit of the head. There—still high elevated above the

rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries—he seems some Turkish

Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A

short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches

for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business

he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house,

sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time

this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like

a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the

other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or

three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the

Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole.

Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the

bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word

to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like

a dairy-maid’s pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the

full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly

emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through

the same round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the

end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper

and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have gone

down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;

several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once

a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild

Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his

one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or

whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or

whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without

stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling

now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came

suckingly up—my God! poor Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket

in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of

Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of

sight!

“Man overboard!” cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first

came to his senses. “Swing the bucket this way!” and putting one foot

into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip

itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost

before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there

was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before

lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea,

as if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only

the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous

depth to which he had sunk.

At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing

the whip—which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles—a

sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all,

one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a

vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship

reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook,

upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be

on the point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent

motions of the head.

“Come down, come down!” yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand

holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he

would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line,

rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the

buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.

“In heaven’s name, man,” cried Stubb, “are you ramming home a cartridge

there?—Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on

top of his head? Avast, will ye!”

“Stand clear of the tackle!” cried a voice like the bursting of a

rocket.

Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass

dropped into the sea, like Niagara’s Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the

suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering

copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging—now over the

sailors’ heads, and now over the water—Daggoo, through a thick mist of

spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,

buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the

sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked

figure with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen

hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my

brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the

side, and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment,

and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands

now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the

ship.

“Ha! ha!” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch

overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust

upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust

forth from the grass over a grave.

“Both! both!—it is both!”—cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and

soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and

with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the

waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was

long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the

slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side

lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then

dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards,

and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first

thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that

was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;—he had

thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a

somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in

the good old way—head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was

doing as well as could be expected.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of

Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was

successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and

apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be

forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing

and boxing, riding and rowing.

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure to

seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have

either seen or heard of some one’s falling into a cistern ashore; an

accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than

the Indian’s, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the

Sperm Whale’s well.

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought

the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and

most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of

a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at

all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had

been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but the

dense tendinous wall of the well—a double welded, hammered substance,

as I have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of

which sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking

in this substance was in the present instance materially counteracted

by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so that it

sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair

chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say.

Yes, it was a running delivery, so it was.

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious

perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant

spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber

and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be

recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey

in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that

leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How

many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and

sweetly perished there?