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- first to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no
rowing whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances
obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a
slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various
whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so
much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the
harpooneer that has caused them.
To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this
world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out
of toil.
CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in
productive subjects, grow the chapters.
The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention.
It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length,
which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the
bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of
the harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the
prow. Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who
snatches it up as readily from its rest as a backwoodsman swings his
rifle from the wall. It is customary to have two harpoons reposing in
the crotch, respectively called the first and second irons.
But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with
the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one
instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the
coming drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It
is a doubling of the chances. But it very often happens that owing to
the instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale upon
receiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the harpooneer,
however lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the second iron into
him. Nevertheless, as the second iron is already connected with the
line, and the line is running, hence that weapon must, at all events,
be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere; else
the most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled into the
water, it accordingly is in such cases; the spare coils of box line
(mentioned in a preceding chapter) making this feat, in most instances,
prudently practicable. But this critical act is not always unattended
with the saddest and most fatal casualties.
Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown
overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror,
skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines,
or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all directions.
Nor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until the whale is
fairly captured and a corpse.
Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging
one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these
qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of
such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be
simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is
supplied with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first
one be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are
faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several
most important, however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be
painted.
CHAPTER 64. Stubb’s Supper.
Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a
calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow
business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen
men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and
fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse
in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long
intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of
the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever
they call it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will
draw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this
grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-lead
in bulk.
Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod’s
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Ahab
dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly
eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for
securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman,
went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until
morning.
Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had
evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the
creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or
despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that dead body
reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand
other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not one jot
advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought
from the sound on the Pequod’s decks, that all hands were preparing to
cast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the
deck, and thrust rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking
links, the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied by
the head to the stern, and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies
with its black hull close to the vessel’s and seen through the darkness
of the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two—ship
and whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one
reclines while the other remains standing.*
*A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most
reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside,
is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is
relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its
flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface;
so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to
put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a
small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end,
and a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship.
By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side
of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily
made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last
locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of
junction with its broad flukes or lobes.
If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known
on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an
unusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was
he in that the staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned
to him for the time the sole management of affairs. One small, helping
cause of all this liveliness in Stubb, was soon made strangely
manifest. Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of
the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.
“A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut
me one from his small!”
Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a general
thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy defray
the current expenses of the war (at least before realizing the proceeds
of the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers
who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale
designated by Stubb; comprising the tapering extremity of the body.
About midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two
lanterns of