CHAPTER 34

  The Cabin-Table

  It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale

loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his

lord and master who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been

taking an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the

latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that

daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete

inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not

heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds,

he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice,

saying, "Dinner, Mr. Starbuck," disappears into the cabin.

  When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck,

the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then

Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks,

and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of

pleasantness, "Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the scuttle. The

second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly

shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right with

that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a

rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows after his predecessors.

  But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the

quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for,

tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and

kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of

a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a

dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a

shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible

from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the

rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he

pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious

little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of

Abjectus, or the Slave.

  It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense

artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck

some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and

defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those

very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in

that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to

say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head

of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore

this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King

of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but

courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane

grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit

presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that

man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for

the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for

Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends,

has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social

czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration

you super-add the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by

inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life

just mentioned.

  Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned

sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his war-like but

still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to

be served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab,

there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind,

their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he

carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the

world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest

observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when

reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was

locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the mate

received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a

little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate;

and chewed it noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without

circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where

the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven imperial

electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in

awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation;

only he himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb,

when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold below. And poor little

Flask, he was the youngest son, and little boy of this weary family

party. His were the shin-bones of the saline beef; his would have been

the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this

must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had

he helped himself at the table, doubtless, never more would he have

been able to hold his head up in this honest world; nevertheless,

strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped

himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it.

Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether

he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of

its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that,

on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a

premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was,

Flask, alas! was a butterless man!

  Another thing. Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and

Flask is the first man up. Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was

badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start

of him; and yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the

rear. If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to

have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his

repast, then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than

three mouthfuls that day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to

precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was that Flask once admitted

in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an

officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be

otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much

relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and

satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I

am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned

beef in the fore-castle, as I used to when I was before the mast.

There's the fruit of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory:

there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere

sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official

capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample

vengeance, was to go aft at dinnertime, and get a peep at Flask

through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before

awful Ahab.

  Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first

table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place in

inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or

rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And

then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its

residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of

the high and mighty cabin.

  In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and

nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire

care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those

inferior fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates,

seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the

harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a

report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like

Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites

had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by

the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a

great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.

And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble

hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of

accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once

Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by

snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty

wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the

circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous,

shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the

progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the

standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical

tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole

life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the

harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape

from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully

peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was over.

  It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego,

opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's; crosswise to them, Daggoo

seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his

hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion of his

colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an

African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great

negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed

hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could

keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a

person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of

the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed

in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are giants

made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of

the lip in eating- an ugly sound enough- so much so, that the

trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth

lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing

out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the

simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him

in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the

whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their

lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they

would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did

not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget

that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been

guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretion. Alas! Dough-Boy!

hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin

should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to

his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and

depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial

bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in

scabbards.

  But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived

there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they

were scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before

sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar

quarters.

  In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American

whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by

rights the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy

alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that,

in real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more

properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when

they did enter it, it was something as a streetdoor enters a house;

turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and,

as a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much

hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was

inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of

Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as

the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when

Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods,

burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there,

sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's

soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the

sullen paws of its gloom!