Zomby Dick, or the Undead Whale Read online

  Ahab says nay! Thy destiny lies along a different path, old man—hast not Fedallah prophesied it?—so be still, Old Thunder, aye, calm thy thunderings; for there in the afterhold reside the tools thou needest to fulfill thy destiny, and thereby earn thy redemption—nothing more!

  Chapter

  In the Shadow of the Moon

  Though consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate killing of Moby Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long habituation, far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated undead one he hunted.

  To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stands in a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced will were Ahab’s, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain; still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his captain’s quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would elapse ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his captain’s leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon him.

  The subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (for few men’s courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby Dick; I, Ishmael did, of a certainty.

  Signs and portents had begun to accumulate in the deeper recesses of my awareness concerning Ahab; things noted but unregarded by my waking mind: his pinprick pupils, tinier than warranted even by the blazing sun, and still miotic on cloudy days and in the dark when I chanced to see him; the fidgety scratching he engaged in when he thought none observed, but was easily seen from aloft; the constant smacking of his lips as though suffering from severe draughmouth; all these signs I knew well from my own past laudanum dependence, and though they were seen by me, yet they were ignored as ludicrous, at least until such a time as more evidence accumulated and such signs could no longer be ignored. And yet, even at that point, it was an easy assumption that the laudanum eased the pain of his livid stump, rubbed raw from Ahab’s constant pacings.

  But for the moment, however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement of Ahab’s quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable—we live in the varying outer weather, and inhale its fickleness—and when retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and hold us healthily suspended before the final dash.

  Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion mankind disdains all base considerations, down to life itself; but such times are evanescent. The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in disgust.

  I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash—aye, cash. The doubloon may hold them enthralled now, but it is not the cash they signed for; let some months go by, and no perspective promise of cash to them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab. Aye, and no gold doubloon nailed to the mast would alter that fact one whit, for that coin, lucky or no, goes to one man only.

  Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod’s voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself.

  That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be subjected to. For all these reasons then, and others perhaps, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod’s voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit of his profession.

  Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.

  Chapter

  The Weavers

  Sultry and full of clouds was the afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self.

  I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn, and now and then sharing of his wild pipe: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates.

  There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle
and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads.

  Meantime, Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be Chance—aye, Chance, Free Will, and Necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working together.

  The straight warp of Necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; Free Will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and Chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of Necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by Free Will, though thus prescribed to by both, Chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events. And with such thoughts did my mind did chance to stumble back in time; the shuttle of my mind wended backwards to distant days, like Penelope unweaving the shroud of Laertes, thereby unravelling the passing of time to stave off distasteful fate. I had watched Lilith’s lithe fingers weave thus; indeed many are the times I did happily sit and quietly watch the smooth and supple dexterity of those small, strong, hands.

  Lilith was a weaver of grass baskets, and had Ariadne put her gods-given skill to such a task she could not have crafted baskets more clever than those that came from the deft and lightly freckled hands of Lilith. In an effort to turn her hands to a trade other than that of her slatternly mother, Lilith had taken it upon herself to learn many queer and diverse abilities, and would coquettishly pester any who would teach her their secrets. But the majority of those trades she dabbled in never did please her overmuch and so were laid aside, as was aught that did not keep her enthralled, or leastwise interested, a fact I learned well while courting her. One such trade Lilith well enjoyed and so pursued to its utmost was the weaving of baskets, made from rushes and grass such as are found on many shores. “It soothes me,” she once smilingly said. To speak of Lil at all, one must needs speak of Awashonks.

  From the age of eight, Lilith was raised by Awashonks, a kindly crone of the Sakonnet Indians, northern neighbors of Tashtego’s Gay Head Wampanoags, and dear friend of Lil’s father, absent upon the sea. Bent and brown as a berry from the weathering of years and no small share of woe, Awashonks was both strong and kind and, in spite of the tragedy that had befallen her people, she was always smiling. And for all this good nature, Lilith said there was an iron core to Awashonks, for her blood ran pure; it was royal blood, as was her name, a storied name and much revered among her people. Awashonks of old was a female saschem, or chief, of the Sakonnet tribe; was a warrior against the British; was a signer of treaties; and Lilith’s foster-mother wore the name of Awashonks proudly.

  From Awashonks Lilith learned many things, not least of which was to weave intricate, water-tight wee baskets, and large loose ones, and any kind in between, all neat and trim as ever a basket could be, with cross-hatched designs dyed by her own hand and sometimes with her very blood, and these baskets she would sell to any who would buy. Her favorite customers had always been sailors, newly landed, and with vivid stories from all over the watery part of the world pouring from them, honey to her mind; and it did not hurt that those new-landed yarn-spinners had cash awash in their well-worn pockets, hard-earned from their labours on the deep.

  I myself had just landed in Portsmouth after eighteen months before the mast on a merchant ship, walking the strand, glad for the coin in my purse, and gladder still for the hard-packed sand under my feet, though the ground did seem to sway a bit as it will to one whose eely legs have long since learned the trick of staying upright amid the pitch and yaw of a ship at sea.

  I had sat myself in the lee of a dune, content and curious as to what fate or circumstance might next bring me, content to feel the breeze and watch the clouds roll by, content to be without whim or whimsy, content as a schoolboy in midsummer, when, over the edge of the dune came a young woman so beautiful I truly thought her a figment. I suspected she was one of the Fey, or, given our closeness to the sea, mayhap an oceanid; for her sea-willow beauty seemed magic. She carried a fat sheave of tough sawgrass bundled cleverly with a twine of her own devising, made from that very same grass, looped over her slim shoulder and her eyes were green sea foam, sparkling in morning sun. In a century of dreaming I would never have imagined what first came from those pale mirthful lips.

  She smiled, said hello and sat a discreet distance away and I, stumble-mouthed and somewhat alarmed, was not able to say a word when, with a knowing twinkle in her eye, and without preamble, she said, “T’other week, I heard from my mum a man in a public house, a bit later in the evening, if you take my meaning,” she said, making a drinking motion with her hand, “this man did make a bet, gainst all the men in that fine establishment, for d’ye see, he’d run out of money and yet still had possession of a fierce and fiery thirst he needs must quench.

  “Well this here Thirsty-man, he did bet those other men to each stand him a drink, due any time that evening, if he did but take one long swallow from the overflowing brass spittoon at their booted feet. One of t’other men addended that bet to say that none would pay if aught came up again.” Her pale-lipped mouth opened wide, teeth flashing in the sun, and her pink tongue jutted wetly in a surprisingly unladylike vomiting motion. She’d had a faraway look in her eye while telling the story thus far, as though she saw clearly in her mind’s eye that bar and those men; but pausing, her face now uncontorted, her eyes snapping back into green focus upon me and she said, “Are ye with me?”

  “In...Indeed,” I stammered out, already thinking, always.

  “So, taking a deep breath, and the rest of the bar breathless and stomachs all asquirm, Thirsty-man does stoop, sloshing some of the thick dark sputum over the rim of the brass spittoon,” she said glancing briefly at me. I could not take my eyes from her and felt a smile coming not only to my face, but throughout my being as she continued.

  “The thick liquid smells a bit sour, like the smell of rotting apples in fall, but with some smoky, saltiness hard to describe, but the flies did seem to enjoy it. He waved them away, our Thirsty-man, and looked to the crowd surrounding him. ‘Do ye swear to honor your words, men? Are there no welchers among ye?’ The crowd did answer in both the affirmative and the negative, and it not clear which answer went with which question, but the man, satisfied enough, then lifted that overflowing brass spittoon to his lip and made ready for a large gulp—indeed the crowd loudly admonished him to do so—all now getting behind the lark. They chanted, ‘Drink, drink, drink,’ rhythmically, and no few faces had widened eyes and did seem a bit pale about the gills, as though they themselves might sick up right there on the bar.

  “Our thirsty protagonist then opened his mouth and filled his cheeks with the slimy liquid,” now this strange and fascinating woman did look to my face to see my reaction. I sensed a climax coming, for at last my wits began to clear somewhat and I realized I was hearing a joke story. That smile within me widened.

  “Thirsty-man’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and the crowd roars its approval and some move to clap the man on the back, but he continues to swallow and now there are shouts of consternation! ‘Stop! Stop, for God’s sake, man, stop!’ but he continues to gulp down that foul brew. Men already pale became paler and more than one offered to buy the man drinks all night if he would but stop! Some others did quietly turn to vomit upon themselves. But he did not stop. He finished it ALL.”

  She paused to let the image resonate; the climax was at hand, her comedic timing impeccable. She continued, “The man wiped his lips and also his face, for it was somewhat smeared, as the men around him, clamoring to buy him whisky, asked him, ‘Gods, man. Why in hell’s name didn’t ye stop?’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ the ma
n said, pantingly, ‘it was all of a piece.’”

  I laughed in startled amusement and applauded and sung her praises, then asked her name, offering up my own in trade. She blushed a bit, and the colour added no small depth to her countenance, nor lodged her less firmly in my heart.

  I would later learn that this jesting approach was but one example of Lilith’s calculated artistry of technique, drawing upon prodigious clarity of judgment on her part regarding another’s tolerance for the indecorous or the bawdy. When desiring to engage with a stranger who caught her fancy, or from whom she might have some need, Lil would quickly assess the stranger and, drawing from no small store of bawdy songs and the sorts of jokes such as sailors tell, and other lore, like legends shared with her by Awashonks, Lilith would size up the stranger and soon decide what yarn in her repertoire might titillate the stranger just enough to be pleasantly shocked, but not so much as to think her rude or embarrassing, whatever that may mean to the one so approached; therein lay the hard-won artistry of the woman. None could have stood long against such wiles; I was infatuated and soon, not a little in love.

  Lilith would later say of my instant infatuation that I was simply too long aboard ship and would have entered rut at any female form, likening me to a baby bird that, upon hatching, follows the first thing it sees as its mother; this is but teasing humility on her part, and since I have expounded already upon the pulchritude of her form and spirit I will desist; nor will I subject you to my reams of poetry regarding her, all of it wonderfully deplorable.

  I did follow her like a baby bird however, and bought all the baskets she could weave, and wooed her with all my might, for never had I met a creature, whether man or beast, towards whom I ever felt such need to be near, towards whom I have yearned to clasp close, as part of my very lifeblood.