CHAPTER 47

  The Mat-Maker

  It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging

about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored waters.

Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a

sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued

and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation

of revelry lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed

resolved into his own invisible self.

  I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I

kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between

the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and

as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken

sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water,

carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn; I say so strange

a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the

sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that

it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a

shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There

lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever

returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to

admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own.

This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I

ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable

threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword,

sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or

weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding

blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the

completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally

shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword

must be chance- aye, chance, free will, and necessity- wise

incompatible- all interweavingly working together. The straight warp

of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course- its every

alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still

free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though

restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and

sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus

prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the

last featuring blow at events.

  Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so

strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball

of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds

whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees

was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly

forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden

intervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that

very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of

whalemen's look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those

lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous

cadence as from Tashtego the Indian's.

  As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and

eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some

prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries

announcing their coming.

  "There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"

  "Where-away?"

  "On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!"

  Instantly all was commotion.

  The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating

and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish

from other tribes of his genus.

  "There go flukes!" was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales

disappeared.

  "Quick, steward!" cried Ahab. "Time! time!"

  Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the

exact minute to Ahab.

  The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently

rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down

heading to leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly

in advance of our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by

the Sperm Whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he

nevertheless, while concealed beneath the surface, mills around, and

swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter- this deceitfulness of his

could not now be in action; for there was no reason to suppose that

the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed

knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selected for

shipkeepers- that is, those not appointed to the boats, by this time

relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at the fore and

mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places; the

cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats

swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs.

Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the

rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look

the long line of man-of-war's men about to throw themselves on board

an enemy's ship.

  But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that

took every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab,

who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out

of air.