- description
- # Chapter 119: The Candles
## Overview
This entity is **Chapter 119** of Herman Melville’s novel *[Moby Dick; Or, The Whale](arke:01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D)*, titled "The Candles." It is a textual chapter within the larger narrative structure of the 1851 literary work, focusing on a dramatic maritime storm encountered by the whaling ship *Pequod*. The chapter was extracted from the digital source file [moby-dick.txt](arke:01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2) as part of a structured archival process and is situated between [Chapter 118](arke:01KFNR85GWGHX3P052J1NGN5PC) and [Chapter 120](arke:01KFNR85HCTQRRG7FH3K00DXTE) in the novel’s sequence.
## Context
This chapter is part of the comprehensive digital edition of *Moby Dick; Or, The Whale* (arke:01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D), preserved within the [Moby Dick](arke:01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV) collection. The collection aggregates the full text of the novel, segmented into chapters and structural components, to facilitate scholarly access and computational analysis. The narrative leading into this chapter includes Captain Ahab’s symbolic rejection of navigational instruments in [Chapter 117](arke:01KFNR85H88S43HS7VYRMW69RY), foreshadowing the confrontation with natural forces depicted here.
## Contents
"The Candles" dramatizes a violent typhoon that strikes the *Pequod*, tearing its sails and leaving the ship bare-poled amid roaring thunder and blinding lightning. The storm is described as a manifestation of nature’s fury, likened to a bomb exploding from a cloudless sky. Starbuck, the first mate, stands on the quarter-deck, monitoring the damaged masts, while Stubb and Flask direct the crew in securing the boats. Despite their efforts, Ahab’s whaleboat is stove in by a massive wave. Stubb responds with dark humor, singing a sea shanty that personifies the ocean as a “funny, sporty, gamy, jesty” figure, even as destruction unfolds. Starbuck rebukes him, insisting on solemnity in the face of divine wrath. Stubb defends his singing as a means of preserving courage, declaring he would only stop if killed—and even then might sing the doxology. The chapter ends with Starbuck urgently gesturing toward the storm, attempting to convey a deeper omen to Stubb, setting the stage for Ahab’s dramatic reappearance in [Chapter 120](arke:01KFNR85HCTQRRG7FH3K00DXTE).
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- Chapter 119: The Candles
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CHAPTER 119. The Candles.
Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal
crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most
effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows
tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in
these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of
all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that
cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and
bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly
ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the
thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts
fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the
tempest had left for its after sport.
Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at
every flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional
disaster might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb
and Flask were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer
lashing of the boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted
to the very top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat (Ahab’s) did
not escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the reeling
ship’s high teetering side, stove in the boat’s bottom at the stern,
and left it again, all dripping through like a sieve.
“Bad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,” said Stubb, regarding the wreck,
“but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can’t fight it. You
see, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps,
all round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me,
all the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But
never mind; it’s all in fun: so the old song says;”—(_sings_.)
Oh! jolly is the gale, And a joker is the whale, A’ flourishin’ his
tail,— Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the
Ocean, oh!
The scud all a flyin’, That’s his flip only foamin’; When he stirs in
the spicin’,— Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad,
is the Ocean, oh!
Thunder splits the ships, But he only smacks his lips, A tastin’ of
this flip,— Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad,
is the Ocean, oh!
“Avast Stubb,” cried Starbuck, “let the Typhoon sing, and strike his
harp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold
thy peace.”
“But I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward;
and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr.
Starbuck, there’s no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my
throat. And when that’s done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a
wind-up.”
“Madman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.”
“What! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else, never
mind how foolish?”
“Here!” cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb by the shoulder, and pointing his
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