CHAPTER 26

  Knights and Squires

  The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket,

and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born

on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his

flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies,

his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been

born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of

those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty and

summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical

superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more

the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the

indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the

man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure

tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and

embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian,

this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and

to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a

patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well

in all climates. Looking into his eves, you seemed to see there the

yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly

confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the

most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of

sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were

certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases

seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious

for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild

watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to

superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some

organization seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than

from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.

And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much

more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and

child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his

nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which,

in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so

often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the

fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not

afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most

reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair

estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless

man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

  "Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there, is as

careful a man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery." But we shall

ere long see what that word "careful" precisely means when used by a

man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.

  Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a

sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon

all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that

in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple

outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be

foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales

after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much

persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this

critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by

them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed

Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father's? Where, in the

bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?

  With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain

superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck,

which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been

extreme. But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so

organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he

had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently

engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances,

would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. And

brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible

in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the

conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary

irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more

terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you

from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.

  But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the

complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have

the heart to write it; but it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking,

to expose the fall of valor in the soul. Men may seem detestable as

joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers

there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but, man, in the

ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing

creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows

should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness

we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact

though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest

anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety

itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings

against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is

not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which

has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that

wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all

hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute!

The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our

divine equality!

  If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I

shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave around them

tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased,

among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts;

if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I

shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against

all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality,

which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!

Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse

to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst

clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and

paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson

from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst

thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly

marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly

commoners; bear me out in it, O God!