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- officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag.”
Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various
ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,
depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans.
Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received
after attaining an age of two or three years or more.
Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely
tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in
consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a
letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy.
“Can’st not read it?” cried Ahab. “Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it’s but
a dim scrawl;—what’s this?” As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a
long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to
insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without
its coming any closer to the ship.
Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, “Mr. Har—yes, Mr. Harry—(a
woman’s pinny hand,—the man’s wife, I’ll wager)—Aye—Mr. Harry Macey,
Ship Jeroboam;—why it’s Macey, and he’s dead!”
“Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife,” sighed Mayhew; “but let
me have it.”
“Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou art soon going
that way.”
“Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain Mayhew, stand by now to
receive it”; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s hands, he
caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the
boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing;
the boat drifted a little towards the ship’s stern; so that, as if by
magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel’s eager hand. He
clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the
letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab’s
feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their
oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the
Pequod.
As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket
of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild
affair.
CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale,
there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands
are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no
staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has
to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the
description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was
mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the
blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the
spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that
same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my
particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to
descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to.
But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall
remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is
concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged,
excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten
feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about,
half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like
a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured
in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at
least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better
chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.
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