CHAPTER 78

  Cistern and Buckets

  Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his

erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to

the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has

carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only

two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this

block, so that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of

the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on the deck.

Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part, the Indian drops through

the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There-

still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom he

vivaciously cries- he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good

people to prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade

being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to

begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds very

heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house, sounding the

walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this

cautious search is over, a stout ironbound bucket, precisely like a

well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other

end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three

alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the

Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole.

Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the

bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word

to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling

like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its

height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand,

and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it

again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will yield no

more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and

harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet

of the pole have gone down.

  Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;

several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once

a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild

Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his

one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or

whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or

whether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without

stating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no

telling now; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket

came suckingly up- my God! poor Tashtego- like the twin

reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down

into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling,

went clean out of sight!

  "Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation

first came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting one

foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the

whip itself the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head,

almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom.

Meantime, there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw

the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the

surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous idea;

whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those

struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk.

  At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was

clearing the whip- which had somehow got foul of the great cutting

tackles- a sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable

horror of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head

tore out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways

swung, till the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an

iceberg. The one remaining hook, upon which the entire strain now

depended, seemed every instant to be on the point of giving way; an

event still more likely from the violent motions of the head.

  "Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one

hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop,

he would still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul

line, rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that

the buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.

  "In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are you ramming home a

cartridge there?- Avast! How will that help him; jamming that

iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye!"

  "Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a

rocket.

  Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass

dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool;

the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her

glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging-

now over the sailors' heads, and now over the water- Daggoo, through a

thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous

tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to

the bottom of the sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away,

when a naked figure with a boardingsword in his hand, was for one

swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud

splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One

packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every

ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or

the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat

alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.

  "Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging

perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm

thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an

arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave.

  "Both! both!- it is both!"-cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout;

and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand,

and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into

the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but

Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

  Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving

after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had

made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there;

then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and

upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that

upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing

that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great

trouble;- he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and

toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next

trial, he came forth in the good old way-head foremost. As for the

great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.

  And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of

Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was

successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and

apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be

forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with

fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.

  I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to

seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have

either seen or heard of some one's falling into a cistern ashore; an

accident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too

than the Indian's, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the

curb of the Sperm Whale's well.

  But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We

thought the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the

lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in

an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee

there. Not at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in,

the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving

little but the dense tendinous wall of the well- a double welded,

hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea

water, and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the

tendency to rapid sinking in this substance was in the present

instance materially counteracted by the other parts of the head

remaining undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and

deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing

his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running

delivery, so it was.

  Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious

perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragment

spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner

chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can

readily be recalled- the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter,

who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding

store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he

died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's

honey head, and sweetly perished there?