CHAPTER 49

  The Hyena

  There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed

affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast

practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more

than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.

However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing.

He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions,

all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an

ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And

as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster,

peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him

only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by

the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward

mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme

tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that

what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous,

now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the

perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial,

desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage

of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.

  "Queequeg," said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the

deck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the

water; "Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often

happen?" Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me,

he gave me to understand that such things did often happen.

  "Mr. Stubb," said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his

oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; "Mr. Stubb, I

think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our

chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I

suppose then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in

a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion?"

  "Certain. I've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale

off Cape Horn."

  "Mr. Flask," said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing

close by; "you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you

tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask,

for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost

into death's jaws?"

  "Can't you twist that smaller?" said Flask. "Yes, that's the law.

I should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a whale face

foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind

that!"

  Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate

statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and

capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were

matters of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at

the superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must

resign my life into the hands of him who steered the boat-

oftentimes a fellow who at that very moment is in his impetuousness

upon the point of scuttling the craft with his own frantic

stampings; considering that the particular disaster to our own

particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck's driving on

to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, and considering that

Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great heedfulness in the

fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent

Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a devil's chase I was

implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I

say, I thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my

will. "Queequeg," said I, "come along, you shall be my lawyer,

executor, and legatee."

  It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at

their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the

world more fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my

nautical life that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was

concluded upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone

was rolled away from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live

would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his

resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as

the case may be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up

in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a

quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a

snug family vault.

  Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my

frock, here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and

destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost.