CHAPTER 35

  The Mast-Head

  It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with

the other seamen my first mast-head came round.

  In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost

simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port; even though she may

have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper

cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years' voyage

she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her- say, an empty

vial even- then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last! and not

till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does

she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

  Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is

a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate

here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old

Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.

For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless,

by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all

Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as

that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board,

in the dread gale of God's wrath; therefore, we cannot give these

Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians

were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the

general belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were

founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by

the peculiar stairlike formation of all four sides of those

edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs,

those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for

new stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail,

or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous

Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in

the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its

summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we

have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who

was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail,

or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally

died at his post. Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a

lifeless set; mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well

capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent

to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange sight.

There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of Vendome stands

with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air;

careless, now, who rules the decks below, whether Louis Philippe,

Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high

aloft on his towering main-mast in Baltimore, and like one of

Hercules' pillars, his column marks that point of human grandeur

beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan

of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and even

when most obscured by that London smoke, token is yet given that a

hidden hero is there; for where there is smoke, must be fire. But

neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a

single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their

counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze; however it may

be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of

the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.

  It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head

standers of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is

not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole

historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells

us, that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were

regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island

erected lofty spars along the seacoast, to which the look-outs

ascended by means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs

in a hen-house. A few years ago this same plan was adopted by the

Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice

to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach. But this custom has now

become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a

whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from

sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at

the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene

weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head:

nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a

hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if

the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your

legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships

once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes.

There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with

nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls;

the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For

the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness

invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling

accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary

excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities;

fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you

shall have for dinner- for all your meals for three years and more are

snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

  In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years'

voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at

the mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to

be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a

portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly

destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted

to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a

bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any

other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily

isolate themselves. Your most usual point of perch is the head of

the t' gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks

(almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t' gallant crosstrees.

Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as

he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure, in cold weather you

may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but

properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than

the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshy

tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of

it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant

pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not

so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin

encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body,

and no more can you make a convenience closet of your watch-coat.

  Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads

of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little

tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the look-outs of a

Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the

frozen seas. In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A

Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and

incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of

Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads

are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then

recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of

Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in

honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and

free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call

our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original

inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after

ourselves any other apparatus we may beret. In shape, the Sleet's

crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe; it is open

above, however, where it is furnished with a movable sidescreen to

keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the

summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch

in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the

ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas,

comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep

your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical

conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this

crow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him

(also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for

the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea

unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot

at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to

shoot down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly

a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the

little detailed conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so

enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very

scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a

small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the

errors resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all

binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of

the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps,

to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I

say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here,

yet, for all his learned "binnacle deviations," "azimuth compass

observations," and "approximate errors," he knows very well, Captain

Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic

meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well

replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his

crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole,

I greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned

Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly

ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter

it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he

was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within

three or four perches of the pole.

  But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as

Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is

greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those

seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used

to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have

a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find

there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg

over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery

pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.

  Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept

but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how

could I- being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering

altitude- how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all

whaleships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out

every time."

  And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of

Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with

lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and

who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head.

Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can

be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes

round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer.

Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the

whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and

absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and

seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently

perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed

whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:-

  "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!

  Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded

young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling

sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so

hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret

souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in

vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is

imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the

visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.

  "Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've

been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a

whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up

here." Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of

them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like

listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded

youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last

he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the

visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind

and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing

that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some

undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive

thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.

In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came;

becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer's sprinkled

Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round

globe over.

  There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted

by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea,

from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is

on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your

identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And

perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled

shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no

more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!