CHAPTER 81

  The Pequod Meets The Virgin

  The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,

Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.

  At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch

and Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide

intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet

with their flag in the Pacific.

  For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her

respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and

dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently

standing in the bows instead of the stern.

  "What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, pointing to

something wavingly held by the German. "Impossible!- a lamp-feeder!"

  "Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck;

he's coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see

that big tin can there alongside of him?- that's his boiling water.

Oh! he's all right, is the Yarman."

  "Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an

oil-can. He's out of oil, and has come a-begging."

  However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on

the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the

old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a

thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer

did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.

  As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all

heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German

soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately

turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some

remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in

profound darkness- his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a

single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding

by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically

called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name of

Jungfrau or the Virgin.

  His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his

ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the

mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick,

that without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he

slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.

  Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German

boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the

Pequod's keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of

their danger, they were going all abreast with great speed straight

before the wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of

horses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though continually

unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea.

  Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a

huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as

well as by the unusual yellowish incrustations over-growing him,

seemed afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether

this whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it

is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social.

Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water

must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad

muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile

currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming

forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds,

followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to

have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters behind

him to upbubble.

  "Who's got some paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache,

I'm afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache!

Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It's the first

foul wind ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale

yaw so before? it must be, he's lost his tiller."

  As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a

deck load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on

her way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then

partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of

his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin.

Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it,

it were hard to say.

  "Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that

wounded arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.

  "Mind he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck. "Give way, or

the German will have him."

  With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this

one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the

most valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other

whales were going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to

defy pursuit for the time. At this juncture, the Pequod's keels had

shot by the three German boats last lowered; but from the great

start he had had, Derick's boat still led the chase, though every

moment neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared,

was, that from being already so nigh to his mark, he would be

enabled to dart his iron before they could completely overtake and

pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite confident that this would

be the case, and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his

lamp-feeder at the other boats.

  "The ungracious and ungrateful dog!" cried Starbuck; "he mocks and

dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes

ago!"- Then in his old intense whisper- "give way, greyhounds! Dog

to it!"

  "I tell ye what it is, men"- cried Stubb to his crew- "it's

against my religion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villainous

Yarman- Pull- won't ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do

ye love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why

don't some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who's that been dropping an

anchor overboard- we don't budge an inch- we're becalmed. Halloo,

here's grass growing in the boat's bottom- and by the Lord, the mast

there's budding. This won't do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short

and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?"

  "Oh! see the suds he makes!" cried Flask, dancing up and down- "What

a hump- Oh, do pile on the beef- lays like a log! Oh! my lads, do

spring- slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads- baked

clams and muffins- ho, do, do, spring,- he's a hundred barreler- don't

lose him now- don't oh, don't!- see that Yarman- Oh, won't ye pull for

your duff, my lads- such a sog! such a sogger! Don't ye love sperm?

There goes three thousand dollars, men!- a bank!- a whole bank! The

bank of England!- Oh, do, do, do!- What's that Yarman about now?"

  At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder

at the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the

double view of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same time

economically accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the

backward toss.

  "The unmannerly Dutch dogger!" cried Stubb. "Pull now, men, like

fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What

d'ye say, Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in

two-and-twenty pieces for the honor of old Gayhead? What d'ye say?"

  "I say, pull like god-dam,"- cried the Indian.

  Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the

Pequod's three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so

disposed, momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous

attitude of the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three

mates stood up proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an

exhilarating cry of, "There she slides, now! Hurrah for the

white-ash breeze! Down with the Yarman! Sail over him!"

  But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all

their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not

a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the

blade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to

free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick's boat was

nigh to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty

rage;- that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a

shout, they took a mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up

on the German's quarter. An instant more, and all four boats were

diagonically in the whale's immediate wake, while stretching from

them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.

  It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was

now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual

tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of

fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering

flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank

in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So

have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted broken

circle in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks.

But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her

fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained

up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking

respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him

unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis

jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man

who so pitied.

  Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the

Pequod's boat the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his

game, Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most

unusually long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.

  But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all

three tigers- Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo- instinctively sprang to

their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed

their barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer,

their three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam

and white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's

headlong rush, bumped the German's aside with such force, that both

Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by

the three flying keels.

  "Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passing

glance upon them as he shot by; "ye'll be picked up presently- all

right- I saw some sharks astern- St. Bernard's dogs, you know- relieve

distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel

a sunbeam! Hurrah!- Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a

mad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a

tilbury on a plain- makes the wheelspokes fly, boys, when you fasten

to him that way; and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you

strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he's

going to Davy Jones- all a rush down an endless inclined plane!

Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!"

  But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he

tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew

round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in

them; while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding

would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might,

they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at

last- owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks

of the boat, whence the three ropes went straight down into the

blue- the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water,

while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon

ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude,

fearful of expending more line, though the position was a little

ticklish. But though boats have been taken down and lost in this

way, yet it is this "holding on," as it is called; this hooking up

by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that

often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again to meet the

sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing,

it is to be doubted whether this course is always the best; for it

is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken whale stays

under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the

enormous surface of him- in a full grown sperm whale something less

than 2000 square feet- the pressure of the water is immense. We all

know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up

under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden

of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of

ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One

whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle

ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on board.

  As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down

into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any

sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its

depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that

silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and

wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were

visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads

the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight

day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the

creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said- "Canst thou fill

his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of

him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the

habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee;

darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a

spear!" This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should

follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his

tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to

hide him from the Pequod's fishspears!

  In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats

sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad

enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the

wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his

head!

  "Stand by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines

suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them,

as by magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so

that every oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in

great part from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a

sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd

of white bears are scared from it into the sea.

  "Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck again; "he's rising."

  The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand's

breadth could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung

back all dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water

within two ship's length of the hunters.

  His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land

animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their

veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least

instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one

of whose peculiarities it is, to have an entire non-valvular structure

of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as

a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial

system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure of

water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said to

pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of

blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that

he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period;

even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is the

well-springs of far-off and indiscernible hills. Even now, when the

boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying

flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by

steady jets from the new made wound, which kept continually playing,

while the natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals,

however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture into the air. From this

last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him had thus far

been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was untouched.

  As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part

of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly

revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were

beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the

noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes

had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to

see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm,

and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to

light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to

illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional

inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last

he partially disclosed a strangely discolored bunch or protuberance,

the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.

  "A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick him there once."

  "Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!"

  But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an

ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more

than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with

swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their

glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat

and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so

spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the

wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with

his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a waning

world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and

died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen

hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain,

and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and

lowers to the ground- so the last long dying spout of the whale.

  Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the

body showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled.

Immediately, by Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it at

different points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken

whale being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords. By

very heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was

transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the

stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially

upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom.

  It so chanced that almost upon first him with the spade, the

entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh,

on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps

of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured

whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence

of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have

been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account

for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact

of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried

iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone

lance? And when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian

long before America was discovered.

  What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous

cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further

discoveries, by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways

to the sea, owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink.

However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to

the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the

ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking arms

with the body; then, when the command was given to break clear from

it, such was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the

fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to

cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant. To

cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the steep

gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory

inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places,

by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were

brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift

from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the

submerged ends could not be at all approached, while every moment

whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the

ship seemed on the point of going over.

  "Hold on, hold on, won't ye?" cried Stubb to the body, "don't be

in such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do

something or go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your

handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and

cut the big chains."

  "Knife? Aye, aye," cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter's heavy

hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began

slashing at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of

sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest.

With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted,

the carcase sank.

  Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm

Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately

accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great

buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the

surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and

broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all

their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason

assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity

in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter

in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and

swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush

and May of life, with all their panting lard about them! even these

brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.

  Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this

accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down,

twenty Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt

imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the

Right Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than

a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there

are instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days,

the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the

reason of this is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to

a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A

line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then. In the Shore

Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right

Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of

rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look for

it when it shall have ascended again.

  It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard

from the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again

lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a

Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because

of its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's

spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful

fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all

his host were now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The

Virgin crowding all sail, made after her four young keels, and thus

they all disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

  Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.