36 The Quarter-Deck
CHAPTER 36
THE QUARTER-DECK.
(Enter Ahab: Then, all.)(Enter Ahab: Then, all.): Beginning with this stage-direction, Chs. 36–40 increasingly use dramatic form. Chs. 37–39 are soliloquies, while Ch. 40 is a single-act setpiece staged on the forecastle and opening with a rising curtain (the foresail). Similarly, see the title of Ch. 29: “Enter Ahab; To Him, Stubb.”
It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden.
Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints—the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.
But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement.
“D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb; “the chick that’s in him pecks the shell. T’will soon be out.”
The hours wore on;—Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purposebigotry of purpose: obstinate, selfish intent. in his aspect.
It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft.
“Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on ship-board except in some extraordinary case.
“Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab. “Mast-heads, there! come down!”
When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew, started from his stand-point; and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:—
“What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?”
“Sing out for him!” was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbedclubbed: joined. voices.
“Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them.
“And what do ye next, men?”
“Lower away, and after him!”
“And what tune is it ye pull to, men?”
“A dead whale or a stove boat!”“A dead whale or a stove boat!”: traditional whaleman’s cry that means, "Either we kill the whale or go down trying."
More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.
But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his pivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:—
“All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white whale. Look ye! d’ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?”—holding up a broad bright coin to the sun—“it is a sixteen dollar piece, menREVISION NARRATIVE: a sixteen dollar piece, men. // The British version adds “—a doubloon” to give “a sixteen dollar piece, men,—a doubloon.” Chances are Melville made this revision to the copy of Moby-Dick he sent to England. The word “doubloon” does not appear again until Ch. 99, “The Doubloon.” Presumably, Melville added the word here in Ch. 36 when Ahab first shows the $16 coin to provide a clear verbal link between it and Ch. 99. The editors of the NN Moby-Dick add this revision to its text; however, in keeping with its principle of not mixing versions, MEL notes the revision here but does not make the change. For a similar, possible revision, see note on "sequel" in Ch. 93. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin.. D’ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.”
While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.
Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, ex-hibiting the gold with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: “Whosoever of ye raisesraises: sees and shouts out for. me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”
“Huzza! huzza!” cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.
“It’s a white whale, I say,” resumed Ahab, as he threw down the top-maul; “a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white waterwhite water: foam created when a whale falls back into the sea after flinging itself out of the water (“breaching”).; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.”
All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by some specific recollection.
“Captain Ahab,” said Tashtego, “that white whale must be the same that some call Moby Dick.”
“Moby Dick?” shouted Ahab. “Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?”
“Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?” said the Gay-Header deliberately.
“And has he a curious spout, too,” said Daggoo, “very bushy, even for a parmacettyparmacetty: slang for spermaceti or sperm whale., and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?”
“And he have one, two, tree—oh! good many iron in him hide, too, Captain,” cried Queequeg disjointedly, “all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him—him—” faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a bottle—“like him—him—”
“Corkscrew!” cried Ahab, “aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a split jib in a squallsplit jib in a squall: ripped triangular headsail in a storm.. Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen—Moby Dick—Moby Dick!”
“Captain Ahab,” said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. “Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick—but it was not Moby Dick that took off thy leg?”
“Who told thee that?” cried Ahab; then pausing, “Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sobREVISION NARRATIVE: he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob // Either an editor or Melville altered this arresting image by revising “sob” to “shout” in the British edition. Regardless of who made the change, the clumsy revision—essentially, he shouted with a shout—seems careless. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin., like that of a heart-stricken moose; “Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me;razeed me: “cut away part of me.” made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway MaelstromNorway Maelstrom: Famous powerful tidal flow in the Lofoten Islands of Norway, mentioned in Redburn and central to Poe’s 1841 tale “A Descent into the Maelström,” where it is exaggerated to a gigantic whirlpool., and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of landon both sides of land: in the Atlantic and Pacific., and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin outfin out: a dead whale rolls to one side, revealing its fin.. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave.”
“Aye, aye!” shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the excited old man: “A sharp eye for the White Whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!”
“God bless ye,” he seemed to half sob and half shout. “God bless ye, men. Steward! go draw the great measure of groggreat measure of grog: large, measured pitcher of watered rum.. But what’s this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick?”
“I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not my command-er’s vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”
“Nantucket market! Hoot!Hoot!: scornfully “Hah!” But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layera little lower layer: a deeper, richer insight.. If money’s to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineasguineas: British gold coins equal to one pound plus one shilling., one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here!”
“He smites his chest,” whispered Stubb, “what’s that for? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow.”
“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”
“Hark ye yet again,—the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks: Ahab explains to Starbuck, the only officer aboard capable of understanding him, the deeper meaning of his quest: To assault the physical whale is to attack the hidden malicious force either within it or metaphysically beyond. Pasteboard (papier-mâché) is the common material of the masks of Egyptian mummies. As a possible source for “pasteboard mask,” Mansfield and Vincent suggest Don Quixote’s “Pasteboard Visor” (1.1.1) and the same book’s “Paste-board-Nose” (2.3.15). In his review essay “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” Melville writes: “Tormented into desperation, Lear, the frantic king, tears off the mask, and speaks the sane madness of vital truth.” In Pierre, Pierre vows to strike through the mask of the unknown. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heapsheaps: imposes on (Melville’s invention). me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presidingjealousy presiding: Although the 1988 NN and 2002 second Norton editions concur with the American and British versions in printing the noun phrase “jealousy presiding,” Hershel Parker—in his “revised third” Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick—emends to the adverbial phrase “jealously presiding,” altering meaning significantly. At this point in this memorable speech, Ahab makes a series of quick, breath-taking claims: that he would strike the sun if it insulted him and that such an act (though it seems boasting) is a kind of “fair play” between sun and man, with (in conclusion) “jealousy presiding over all creations.” That is, given this fair-play equalization of natural powers, “jealousy” of one for the other is the prime motivator among nature’s “creations.” This form of envy recalls the Edenic human desire to be like God, as parsed by Milton in Paradise Lost. But Parker’s revision to the adverbial “jealously presiding” converts Melville’s Miltonism regarding innate human jealousy into a modifier that confusingly personifies “fair play” as jealous and removes the notion of jealousy in human ambition entirely. Parker offers no scribal or interpretive justification for this emendation; MEL makes no change. over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends’ glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawnTurkish cheeks of spotted tawn: savage, tanned, dirty cheeks of the crew, like a Turk’s (a Western stereotype).—living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards—the unreckingunrecking: unheeding or thoughtless, but here also unselfconscious. and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. ’Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone? Ah! constrainingsconstrainings: compunctions, doubts. seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!—Aye, aye! thy silence, then, thatREVISION NARRATIVE: thy silence, then, that voices thee. // The British version revises “then,” to “that—” to give “thy silence, that—that voices thee.” Melville probably made the revision, which creates a dramatic repetition and intensifies Ahab’s delivery. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me nowREVISION NARRATIVE: cannot oppose me now, without rebellion. // The British edition removes “now,” a revision that eliminates the repetition in “Starbuck now is mine” in the preceding line. Since a copyeditor might not bother with such niceties, and Melville frequently did, the revision is probably his. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin., without rebellion.”
“God keep me!—keep us all!” murmured Starbuck, lowly.
But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck’s downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our being, these still drive us on.
“The measure! the measure!” cried Ahab.
Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship’s company formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.
“Drink and pass!” he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman. “The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short draughts—long swallows, men; ’tis hot as Satan’s hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me—here’s a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!
“Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and ye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble customREVISION NARRATIVE: revive a noble custom // Melville learned about this ceremony in Robert Pearse Gillies's 1826 Tales of a Voyager to the Arctic Ocean (see Mansfield and Vincent, 687–88). The British version reads “revive an old custom,” an editorial revision reflecting uneasiness with Melville’s democratizing agenda of ascribing nobility to the working class. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will yet see that——Ha! boy, come back? bad penniesbad pennies: Proverbially, if you pay with a counterfeit coin, it will sooner or later come back to you. come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, wert not thou St. Vitus’ impSt. Vitus’ imp . . . ague!: Ahab is saying that the pewter cup would be full if the fearful Steward’s trembling had not spilled some of the grog. St. Vitus’s dance or chorea is a neurological disorder causing muscle spasms; ague is a fever or fit of shivering.—away, thou ague!
“Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let me touch the axis.” So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotionREVISION NARRATIVE: he would fain have shocked into them the same fiery emotion // Ishmael characterizes Ahab as a “Leyden jar,” the device used in parlor demonstrations for generating static electricity and administering harmless shocks to observers, who are usually holding hands so that all can feel the shock. In the image, Ahab contains an “interior volition,” which, like the static built up in a Leyden jar, he wants to transmit, like an electric shock, into the crew, thus animating them with his will. In “Hawthorne and His Mosses” (the review essay written during the composition of Moby-Dick), Melville uses a similar version of the same electric image to describe Hawthorne’s genius, which administers a “shock of recognition” to the rest of the world. Thus, the locution “shocked into them” carries for Melville its own specialized meaning. However, the British edition changes the phrasing of “shocked into them” to “shocked them into,” and thereby inverts the electric image. Here, Ahab would provide a shock so that the crew, with a volition of its own, would then become as fiery as Ahab. The revision is probably editorial and perhaps accidental. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright.
“In vain!” cried Ahab; “but, maybe, ’tis well. For did ye three but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, that had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye three cup-bearers to my three pagan kinsmen there—yon three most honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer?Pope washes . . . tiara for ewer?: A ceremony conducted before Easter, evoking Jesus in John, 13.1–15. The Pope’s beehive-shaped triple crown is called a tiara; ewer means pitcher. Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your seizingsseizings: bindings of cord holding together the iron shafts and wooden poles of the harpoons. and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!”
Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him.
“Stab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye not the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!” Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.
“Now, three to three, ye stand. CommendCommend: Entrust; as in Macbeth: “this . . . / Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice / To our own lips” (1.7.10–12). the murderous chalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat’s bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin.