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- 7204
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-23T15:41:03.420Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7121
- text
- it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!
PIP. Jinglers, you say?—there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.
CHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of
thyself.
FRENCH SAILOR. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through
it! Split jibs! tear yourselves!
TASHTEGO. (_Quietly smoking._) That’s a white man; he calls that fun:
humph! I save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what
they are dancing over. I’ll dance over your grave, I will—that’s the
bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round
corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-skulled
crews! Well, well; belike the whole world’s a ball, as you scholars
have it; and so ’tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads,
you’re young; I was once.
3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than pulling after
whales in a calm—give us a whiff, Tash.
(_They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky
darkens—the wind rises_.)
LASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it’ll be douse sail soon. The sky-born,
high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR. (_Reclining and shaking his cap_.) It’s the waves—the
snow’s caps turn to jig it now. They’ll shake their tassels soon. Now
would all the waves were women, then I’d go drown, and chassee with
them evermore! There’s naught so sweet on earth—heaven may not match
it!—as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the
over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR. (_Reclining_.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad—fleet
interlacings of the limbs—lithe swayings—coyings—flutterings! lip!
heart! hip! all graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye,
else come satiety. Eh, Pagan? (_Nudging_.)
TAHITAN SAILOR. (_Reclining on a mat_.) Hail, holy nakedness of our
dancing girls!—the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I
still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven
in the wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn
and wilted quite. Ah me!—not thou nor I can bear the change! How then,
if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from
Pirohitee’s peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the
villages?—The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (_Leaps to his
feet_.)
PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing ’gainst the side! Stand
by for reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell
they’ll go lunging presently.
DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou
holdest! Well done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He’s no more
afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic
with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!
4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab
tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a
waterspout with a pistol—fire your ship right into it!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man’s a grand old cove! We are the
lads to hunt him up his whale!
ALL. Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort
of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there’s none
but the crew’s cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort
of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at
sea. Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there’s another
in the sky—lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.
DAGGOO. What of that? Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me! I’m
quarried out of it!
SPANISH SAILOR. (_Aside_.) He wants to bully, ah!—the old grudge makes
me touchy (_Advancing_.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable
dark side of mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence.
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