CHAPTER 126

  The Life-Buoy

  Steering now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her

progress solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod

held on her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through

such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways

impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all

these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and

desperate scene.

  At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of

the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes

before the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the

watch- then headed by Flask- was startled by a cry so plaintively wild

and unearthly- like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all

Herod's murdered Innocents- that one and all, they started from

their reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or

leaned all transfixed by listening, like the carved Roman slave, while

that wild cry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part

of the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan

harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman- the oldest

mariner of all- declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were

heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea.

  Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when

he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not

unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus

explained the wonder.

  Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great

numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or

some dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship

and kept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of

wall. But this only the more affected some of them, because most

mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not

only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the

human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen

peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain

circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men.

  But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most

plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their number that

morning. At sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head

at the fore; and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from

his sleep (for sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state),

whether it was thus with the man, there is now no telling; but, be

that as it may, he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was

heard- a cry and a rushing- and looking up, they saw a falling phantom

in the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in

the blue of the sea.

  The life-buoy- a long slender cask- was dropped from the stern,

where it always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to

seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken,

so that it slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its

every pore; and the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the

bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.

  And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look

out for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground;

that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of

that at the time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at

this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a

fore-shadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil

already presaged. They declared that now they knew the reason of those

wild shrieks they had heard the night before. But again the old

Manxman said nay.

  The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed

to see to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found,

and as in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis

of the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was

directly connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to

be; therefore, they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided

with a buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg

hinted a hint concerning his coffin.

  "A life-buoy of a coffin!" cried Starbuck, starting.

  "Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb.

  "It will make a good enough one," said Flask, "the carpenter here

can arrange it easily."

  "Bring it up; there's nothing else for it," said Starbuck, after a

melancholy pause. "Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so- the

coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it."

  "And shall I nail down the lid, sir?" moving his hand as with a

hammer.

  "Aye."

  "And shall I caulk the seams, sir?" moving his hand as with a

caulking-iron.

  "Aye."

  "And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?" moving his

hand as with a pitch-pot.

  "Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the

coffin, and no more.- Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me."

  "He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he

baulks. Now I don't like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he

wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he

won't put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with

that coffin? And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It's

like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side

now. I don't like this cobbling sort of business- I don't like it at

all; it's undignified; it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats do

tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but

clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that

regularly begins at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway,

and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler's job, that's

at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end. It's the old

woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all

old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who

ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that's the reason I

never would work for lonely widow old women ashore when I kept my

job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken into their lonely

old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea

but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay

over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the

snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before

with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied

up in rigging, ere they would do the job. But I'm made of knotty

Aroostook hemlock; I don't budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing

about with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make

bridal bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We

work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to

ask the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too confounded

cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. Hem! I'll do the job, now,

tenderly. I'll have me- let's see- how many in the ship's company, all

told? But I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty separate,

Turk's-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to

the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there'll be thirty lively

fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often

beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and

marling-spike! Let's to it."