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- him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some
organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than
from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his. And
if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more
did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child,
tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature,
and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some
honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often
evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “I
will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a
whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and
useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the
encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more
dangerous comrade than a coward.
“Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as
careful a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall
ere long see what that word “careful” precisely means when used by a
man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.
Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a
sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon
all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in
this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits
of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly
wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after
sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted
in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical
ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for
theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew.
What doom was his own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could
he find the torn limbs of his brother?
With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain
superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which
could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But
it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such
terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature
that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in
him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its
confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it
was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which,
while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or
whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet
cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors,
which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged
and mighty man.
- title
- Chunk 73