- description
- # CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
## Overview
This entity is a section of the novel "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale," titled "CHAPTER 127. The Deck." It spans lines 20066 to 20160 of the source file.
## Context
This chapter is part of the novel "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale," which was extracted from the file "moby_dick.txt" and is included in the "Melville Complete Works" collection. It follows "CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy." and precedes "CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel."
## Contents
This chapter depicts a conversation on the deck of the Pequod, primarily between Ahab and the Carpenter. The Carpenter is working on Queequeg's coffin, which has been repurposed as a life-buoy. Ahab engages the Carpenter in a philosophical discussion about his various trades—leg-maker, undertaker, and coffin-maker—and the nature of life and death. The dialogue touches upon themes of fate, the gods, and the symbolic meaning of the coffin and life-buoy. Pip also appears, and Ahab expresses his intention to draw profound insights from the boy. The chapter highlights Ahab's intense, almost obsessive, contemplation of death and existence, set against the backdrop of the ship's daily activities.
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- 2026-01-30T20:51:15.365Z
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- CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:29.272Z
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- CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
_The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the
open hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted
oakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of
his frock.—Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip
following him._
“Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand
complies with my humor more genially than that boy.—Middle aisle of a
church! What’s here?”
“Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the
hatchway!”
“Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.”
“Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does.”
“Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy
shop?”
“I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?”
“Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?”
“Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but
they’ve set me now to turning it into something else.”
“Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,
monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the
next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those
same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a
jack-of-all-trades.”
“But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.”
“The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a
coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the
craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in
hand. Dost thou never?”
“Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I’m indifferent enough, sir, for that; but
the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there
was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark
to it.”
“Aye, and that’s because the lid there’s a sounding-board; and what in
all things makes the sounding-board is this—there’s naught beneath. And
yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.
Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against
the churchyard gate, going in?
“Faith, sir, I’ve——”
“Faith? What’s that?”
“Why, faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like—that’s all,
sir.”
“Um, um; go on.”
“I was about to say, sir, that——”
“Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.”
“He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot
latitudes. I’ve heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the
Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some
sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He’s always
under the Line—fiery hot, I tell ye! He’s looking this way—come, oakum;
quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I’m the
professor of musical glasses—tap, tap!”
(_Ahab to himself_.)
“There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The greyheaded woodpecker tapping
the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that
thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag,
that fellow. Rat-tat! So man’s seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all
materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here
now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the
expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A
life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some
spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!
I’ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth,
that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain
twilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed
sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return again.
Now, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous
philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds
must empty into thee!”
- title
- CHAPTER 127. The Deck.