CHAPTER 7

  The Chapel

  In the same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few

are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or

Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I

did not.

  Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon

this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to

driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the

cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.

Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and

sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at

times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed

purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were

insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and

there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing

several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on

either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the

following, but I do not pretend to quote:

  SACRED

  TO THE MEMORY

  OF

  JOHN TALBOT,

  Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard

  Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,

  November 1st, 1836.

  THIS TABLET

  Is erected to his Memory

  BY HIS SISTER.

  SACRED

  TO THE MEMORY

  OF

  ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,

  NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,

  AND SAMUEL GLEIG,

  Forming one of the boats' crews

  OF

  THE SHIP ELIZA

  Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,

  On the Off-shore Ground in the

  PACIFIC,

  December 31st, 1839.

  THIS MARBLE

  Is here placed by their surviving

  SHIPMATES.

  SACRED

  TO THE MEMORY

  OF

  The late

  CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY,

  Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a

  Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan,

  August 3d, 1833.

  THIS TABLET

  Is erected to his Memory

  BY

  HIS WIDOW.

  Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated

myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see

Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was

a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This

savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance;

because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was

not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of

the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now

among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded

accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present

wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief,

that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose

unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically

caused the old wounds to bleed afresh.

  Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing

among flowers can say- here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the

desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in

those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in

those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden

infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse

resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a

grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as

here.

  In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are

included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they

tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin

Sands! how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other

world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not

thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this

living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures

upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly,

hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round

centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for

those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable

bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore

but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All

these things are not without their meanings.

  But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these

dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

  It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a

Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky

light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen

who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine.

But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine

chance for promotion, it seems- aye, a stove boat will make me an

immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling- a

speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what

then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and

Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true

substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too

much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking

that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees

of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it

is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a

stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove

himself cannot.