- char_end
- 449196
- char_start
- 441343
- chunk_index
- 62
- chunk_total
- 178
- estimated_tokens
- 1964
- source_file_key
- moby-dick
- text
-
It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in
a cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to
the scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the
buckets to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the
hallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak
or rustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the
deepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the
steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.
It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon,
whose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a
Cholo, the words above.
“Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”
“Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d’ye mean?”
“There it is again—under the hatches—don’t you hear it—a cough—it
sounded like a cough.”
“Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.”
“There again—there it is!—it sounds like two or three sleepers turning
over, now!”
“Caramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It’s the three soaked biscuits
ye eat for supper turning over inside of ye—nothing else. Look to the
bucket!”
“Say what ye will, shipmate; I’ve sharp ears.”
“Aye, you are the chap, ain’t ye, that heard the hum of the old
Quakeress’s knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you’re
the chap.”
“Grin away; we’ll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody
down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I
suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell
Flask, one morning watch, that there was something of that sort in the
wind.”
“Tish! the bucket!”
CHAPTER 44. The Chart.
Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that
took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his
purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the
transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea
charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating
himself before it, you would have seen him intently study the various
lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady
pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At
intervals, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein
were set down the seasons and places in which, on various former
voyages of various ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen.
While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his
head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever
threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till
it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and
courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing
lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.
But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his
cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were
brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and
others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before
him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to
the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.
Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans,
it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary
creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem
to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby
calculating the driftings of the sperm whale’s food; and, also, calling
to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular
latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to
certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that
ground in search of his prey.
So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the
sperm whale’s resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe
that, could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world;
were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully
collated, then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to
correspond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the
flights of swallows. On this hint, attempts have been made to construct
elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.*
*Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by
an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National
Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it
appears that precisely such a chart is in course of completion; and
portions of it are presented in the circular. “This chart divides the
ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of
longitude; perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve
columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each of which
districts are three lines; one to show the number of days that have
been spent in each month in every district, and the two others to
show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have been
seen.”
Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the
sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct—say, rather, secret
intelligence from the Deity—mostly swim in _veins_, as they are called;
continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating
exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with one
tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the
direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor’s parallel,
and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own
unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary _vein_ in which at these
times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width
(more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but
never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship’s mast-heads, when
circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. The sum is, that at
particular seasons within that breadth and along that path, migrating
whales may with great confidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate
feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing
the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his
art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be
wholly without prospect of a meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his
delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality,
perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons
for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the
herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year,
say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were
found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and
unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In
general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the
solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that
though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on what
is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on
the Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow, that were the Pequod to
visit either of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she
would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some other feeding
grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed
only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not his
places of prolonged abode.