93 The Castaway
CHAPTER 93
THE CASTAWAY.
It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own.
Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats’ crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him beforeye have heard of him before: See Ch. 40.; ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar color, driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race. For blacks, the year’s calendar should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year’s Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king’s cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life’s peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in ConnecticutTolland County in Connecticut: On the state's central northern border, Tolland County is about 100 miles from Pittsfield, MA, where Melville composed Moby-Dick. In Ch. 27, Pip is said to be a "poor Alabama boy," and at some point in the composition of the novel, Melville reconceived Pip as free—see also "old Tolland County" in Ch. 99—basing him on former Black shipmate John Backus, who like Pip leapt from a whaleboat. Backus's origin has not yet been determined, but Melville's choice of "Tolland County" might reflect his personal interactions with Backus. For more on Backus, see Bryant, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life, vol. 2, ch. 68., he had once enlivened many a fiddler’s frolic on the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell. But let us to the story.
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb’s after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness; but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.
Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary raprap: convulsive blow with its tail. , which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip’s seat. The involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around his chest and neck.
Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroonpoltroon: coward.. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, “Cut?” Meantime Pip’s blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God’s sake! All passed in a flash. In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
“Damn him, cut!” roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except—but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, “Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won’t pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can’t afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don’t jump any more.” Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellowthough man loved his fellow: Melville’s past-tense “loved” is marginally questionable as the sentence seems to call for the universalizing effect of the present-tense “loves.” The British alteration, in the second half of the sentence, from “interferes” to “interfered” (see thumbnails) suggests Melville or an editor was revising in order to put both verbs in parallel, but in the past tense, though doing so turns Ishmael’s universal comment on humanity into a treatment of historical human events. The editors of the NN and all Norton Critical Editions of Moby-Dick emend “loved” to “loves.” MEL refrains from correcting Melville’s grammatical anomalies and makes no change but calls attention to the problem through this annotation., yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It was under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale started to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller’s trunk. Alas! Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater’s skingold-beater’s skin: animal membrane used in beating gold; but here confused with gold-leaf. hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip’s ebon head showed like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly astern. Stubb’s inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest.
Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore.
But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea—mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.
But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No; he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmenREVISION NARRATIVE: such considerations towards oarsmen . . . is not always manifested // In the British edition, the change from “considerations” to “considerateness” may have been made by Melville or his editor. While the alteration corrects the faulty subject-verb agreement problem of "considerations is," it also modifies meaning. The point is not that the whalemen have no consideration toward timid oarsmen like Pip, but that they are not always able to be considerate. Taking the British revision “considerateness” to be a “genuine improvement,” as well as a grammatical correction, the NN edition emends by adopting the British version (788–89). In keeping with its principle of not mixing editions, MEL makes no change but notes the revision here. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin. jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and armies.
But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and Stubb’s boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depthswondrous depths: “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep” (Psalms 107.23–24)., where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdommiser-merman, Wisdom: Not Triton, the Greek sea god commonly depicted as half human, half fish, or another figure from myth or legend, but Melville’s invented personification implying the difficulty of obtaining wisdom. Compare the “salamander giants” of Ch. 76., revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadletreadle: pedal or lever. of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s senseman’s insanity is heaven’s sense: Compare to Melville's Pierre, “though the earthly wisdom of man be heavenly folly to God, so also, conversely, is the heavenly wisdom of God an earthly folly to man” (Book 14, Part 1).; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his GodREVISION NARRATIVE: indifferent as his God // The final phrase, “indifferent as his God,” was removed in the British version, expurgated by an editor for its double blasphemy: that God is indifferent (or that such indifference is “Heaven’s sense”), and that man can achieve this level of divine awareness. To compare American and British pages, click the thumbnails in the right margin..
For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that fishery; and in the sequelsequel of the narrative . . . what like abandonment befell myself: Ishmael hints at what will happen as though he has already written the book’s climactic conclusion and its "sequel," the “Epilogue.” One possibility is that Melville may have added this foreshadowing of Ishmael’s "abandonment"—he is bumped from his boat—after writing the novel’s conclusion, while he was revising galleys of earlier chapters already set in type by his American printer in the summer of 1851.
See also revision narrative for "sixteen dollar piece" in Ch. 36 for a similar proofsheet revision. of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself.