47 The Mat-Maker
CHAPTER 47
THE MAT-MAKER.
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional lashinglashing: tie-down used to secure a whaleboat when suspended in its place over the ship’s side. to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of revery 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 matbusy at the mat: In this scene, partly derived from Francis Allyn Olmsted's Incidents of a Whaling Voyage, Ishmael assists Queequeg as a "page" might attend his knight. He uses his hand rather than a wooden shuttle, a device employed by weavers, to carry the woof (crosswise thread) of a two-stranded, tarred rope called marline between the fixed, perpendicular strands of the warp. Meanwhile, Queequeg tamps the woof into the warp with a wooden slat, here figured as a "sword," in order to tighten the texture of the “mat” they are weaving on a makeshift loom. Once finished, the mat will help secure their whaleboat when it is suspended over the ship’s side. See Mardi, Ch. 5: “A broad, braided, hempen band . . . also passed round both gunwales; and secured to the ship’s bulwarks, firmly lashes the [whaleboat] to its place.". 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 TimeLoom of Time: the phrase, found in Sartor Resartus (1.8), is Thomas Carlyle’s translated quotation from Goethe’s Faust (1.1): “’Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, / And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by.” See Mansfield and Vincent's edition of Moby-Dick (725)., 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—no wise 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 rightright: straight, rigid. lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free willREVISION NARRATIVE: directed by free will // Probably Melville, not an editor, revised “directed” to “modified” for the British edition. In Ishmael’s extended weaving metaphor, necessity is the warp or fixed vertical threads, which only move (vibrate) when they are separated by the traversing shuttle (in this case, Ishmael’s hand), which carries the woof, or thread, of free will; Queequeg’s wooden sword of chance unevenly tamps down the woof into the warp. But at the same time, Ishmael concludes, necessity and free will limit the effect of chance just as warp and woof provide the restraints and conditions by which Queequeg’s sword must be applied. To some extent, then, free will “directs” chance in that it gives direction to chance events. However, Melville may have felt that ”directed” overstates the power of free will, allowing the will to seem to control chance. By revising so that chance is merely “modified by free will,” Melville lessens the will’s controlling power. The NN editors adopted Melville’s revision as the “more appropriate word” (790); however, in keeping with its principal of not mixing versions but registering the revision in annotation, MEL makes no change. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin., though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.
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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-beamOn the lee-beam: at a right angle to the middle of the ship on the side away from the wind., 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!”“There go flukes!”: “The whale is diving!” (showing its tail). 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 windkept away from the wind: steered so the wind blows directly from behind., 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 swimsREVISION NARRATIVE: swiftly swims // The British edition inverts the wording so that the whale “mills round, and swims swiftly off.” The revision (probably Melville’s) puts the two verbal sets in parallel and alters the rhythm of the passage. In keeping with its principal of not mixing versions, MEL does not emend its reading text to reflect this likely revision but instead registers the change in annotation. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. 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 mizzenfore and mizzen . . . tubs . . . cranes . . . mainyard was backed: The lookouts climb down the rigging from the foremast and mizzenmast; the tubs, in which the whale-line is coiled, are placed one to a boat; the cranes, hinged wooden supports on which whaleboats rest in their usual position hanging over the ship’s side, are swung back against the ship; and the mainyard is swung so the wind strikes the front of its sail, slowing the ship. 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 samphiresamphire baskets over high cliffs: Samphire is an herb used in pickling; when growing on high rocks, samphire was harvested by men lowered in baskets. The image derives from King Lear: “half way down” a cliff “Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!” (4.6.18–19). baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarksOutside of the bulwarks . . . gunwale: Standing with one foot at the base of the outer side of the ship's wall above the deck—that is, the “bulwarks” (pronounced “BUL arks”)—while grasping with one hand the top of that wall, the men leaning over the sea rest the other foot on the gunwale (pronounced "GUN uhl"), or strip of wood along the top of a whaleboat’s side. 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.