第 四十七 章 · The Mat-Maker.

It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging

about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters.

Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,

for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet

somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie

lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own

invisible self.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I

kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the

long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as

Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword

between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly

and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess

did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only

broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as

if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically

weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of

the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging

vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise

interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed

necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle

and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,

Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof

slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;

and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding

contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s

sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and

woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free

will, and necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working

together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its

ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending

to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;

and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of

necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though

thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the

last featuring blow at events.

Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so

strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of

free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds

whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees

was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly

forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden

intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that

very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of

whalemen’s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those

lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous

cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and

eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some

prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries

announcing their coming.

“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”

“Where-away?”

“On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!”

Instantly all was commotion.

The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and

reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from

other tribes of his genus.

“There go flukes!” was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales

disappeared.

“Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! time!”

Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact

minute to Ahab.

The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling

before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to

leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of

our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale

when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while

concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in

the opposite quarter—this deceitfulness of his could not now be in

action; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by

Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our

vicinity. One of the men selected for shipkeepers—that is, those not

appointed to the boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the

main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the

line tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust out; the

mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over the sea like three

samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager

crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly

poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war’s men about

to throw themselves on board an enemy’s ship.

But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took

every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was

surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.