Chương Chương 49 · The Hyena.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed

affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast

practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more

than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.

However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He

bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all

hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich

of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for

small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril

of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly,

good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen

and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am

speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation;

it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before

might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part

of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to

breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with

it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White

Whale its object.

“Queequeg,” said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the

deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the

water; “Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often

happen?” Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he

gave me to understand that such things did often happen.

“Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his

oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr. Stubb, I

think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief

mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose

then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy

squall is the height of a whaleman’s discretion?”

“Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off

Cape Horn.”

“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing

close by; “you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you

tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask,

for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into

death’s jaws?”

“Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law. I

should like to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face

foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind

that!”

Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement

of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings

in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of

common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the

superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign

my life into the hands of him who steered the boat—oftentimes a fellow

who at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of

scuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings; considering that

the particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be

imputed to Starbuck’s driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a

squall, and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for

his great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to

this uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s boat; and finally considering in

what a devil’s chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking

all things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make

a rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,” said I, “come along, you shall be

my lawyer, executor, and legatee.”

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at

their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world

more fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical

life that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded

upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled

away from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as

good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a

supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might

be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest.

I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a

clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.

Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,

here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the

devil fetch the hindmost.