Herman
Melville was the author of a story about what we'd now consider an illegal activity,
the commercial hunting of whales for oil and meat. Whaling is still
carried out by Japan, Iceland and Canada, among other nations, though
most nations voluntarily abstain in the interests of conserving these
magnificent animals - as per International
Whaling Commission guidelines.
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CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.
HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.
(FORESAIL RISES AND DISCOVERS THE WATCH STANDING, LOUNGING, LEANING, AND LYING IN VARIOUS ATTITUDES, ALL SINGING IN CHORUS.)
Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
Our captain's commanded.—
1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me! (SINGS, AND ALL FOLLOW)
Our captain stood upon the deck,
A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales
That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys,
And by your braces stand,
And we'll have one of those fine whales,
Hand, boys, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!
MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward!
2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch. I've the sort of mouth for that—the hogshead mouth. So, so, (THRUSTS HIS HEAD DOWN THE SCUTTLE,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells there below! Tumble up!
DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I mark this in our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as filliping to others. We sing; they sleep—aye, lie down there, like ground-tier butts. At 'em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail 'em through it. Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment. That's the way—THAT'S it; thy throat ain't spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!
PIP. (SULKY AND SLEEPY) Don't know where it is.
FRENCH SAILOR. Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say; merry's the word; hurrah! Damn me, won't you dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs! legs!
ICELAND SAILOR. I don't like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my taste. I'm used to ice-floors. I'm sorry to throw cold water on the subject; but excuse me.
MALTESE SAILOR. Me too; where's your girls? Who but a fool would take his left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do? Partners! I must have partners!
SICILIAN SAILOR. Aye; girls and a green!—then I'll hop with ye; yea, turn grasshopper!
LONG-ISLAND SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us. Hoe corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here comes the music; now for it!
AZORE SAILOR. (ASCENDING, AND PITCHING THE TAMBOURINE UP THE SCUTTLE.) Here you are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now, boys! (THE HALF OF THEM DANCE TO THE TAMBOURINE; SOME GO BELOW; SOME SLEEP OR LIE AMONG THE COILS OF RIGGING. OATHS A-PLENTY.)
AZORE SAILOR. (DANCING) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!
PIP. Jinglers, you say?—there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.
CHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of thyself.
FRENCH SAILOR. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it! Split jibs! tear yourselves!
TASHTEGO. (QUIETLY SMOKING) That's a white man; he calls that fun: humph! I save my sweat.
OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are dancing over. I'll dance over your grave, I will—that's the bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as you scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once.
3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!—whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm—give us a whiff, Tash.
(THEY CEASE DANCING, AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS. MEANTIME THE SKY DARKENS—THE WIND RISES.)
LASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born, high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!
MALTESE SAILOR. (RECLINING AND SHAKING HIS CAP.) It's the waves—the snow's caps turn to jig it now. They'll shake their tassels soon. Now would all the waves were women, then I'd go drown, and chassee with them evermore! There's naught so sweet on earth—heaven may not match it!—as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.
SICILIAN SAILOR. (RECLINING.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad—fleet interlacings of the limbs—lithe swayings—coyings—flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come satiety. Eh, Pagan? (NUDGING.)
TAHITAN SAILOR. (RECLINING ON A MAT.) Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls!—the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn and wilted quite. Ah me!—not thou nor I can bear the change! How then, if so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the villages?—The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (LEAPS TO HIS FEET.)
PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing 'gainst the side! Stand by for reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell they'll go lunging presently.
DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest! Well done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He's no more afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!
4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol—fire your ship right into it!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man's a grand old cove! We are the lads to hunt him up his whale!
ALL. Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the crew's cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in the sky—lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.
DAGGOO. What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me! I'm quarried out of it!
SPANISH SAILOR. (ASIDE.) He wants to bully, ah!—the old grudge makes me touchy (ADVANCING.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of mankind—devilish dark at that. No offence.
DAGGOO (GRIMLY). None.
ST. JAGO'S SAILOR. That Spaniard's mad or drunk. But that can't be, or else in his one case our old Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in working.
5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. What's that I saw—lightning? Yes.
SPANISH SAILOR. No; Daggoo showing his teeth.
DAGGOO (SPRINGING). Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!
SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM). Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!
ALL. A row! a row! a row!
TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF). A row a'low, and a row aloft—Gods and men—both brawlers! Humph!
BELFAST SAILOR. A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge in with ye!
ENGLISH SAILOR. Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard's knife! A ring, a ring!
OLD MANX SAILOR. Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad'st thou the ring?
MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!
ALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.)
PIP (SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS). Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal yard! It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of the year! Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they go, all cursing, and here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em; they're on the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But those chaps there are worse yet—they are your white squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale—shirr! shirr!—but spoken of once! and only this evening—it makes me jingle all over like my tambourine—that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him! Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!
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BOOK
CHAPTERS
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
CHAPTER
2. The Carpet-Bag.
CHAPTER
3. The Spouter-Inn.
CHAPTER
4. The Counterpane.
CHAPTER
5. Breakfast.
CHAPTER
6. The Street.
CHAPTER
7. The Chapel.
CHAPTER
8. The Pulpit.
CHAPTER
9. The Sermon.
CHAPTER
10. A Bosom Friend.
CHAPTER
11. Nightgown.
CHAPTER
12. Biographical.
CHAPTER
13. Wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER
14. Nantucket.
CHAPTER
15. Chowder.
CHAPTER
16. The Ship.
CHAPTER
17. The Ramadan.
CHAPTER
18. His Mark.
CHAPTER
19. The Prophet.
CHAPTER
20. All Astir.
CHAPTER
21. Going Aboard.
CHAPTER
22. Merry Christmas.
CHAPTER
23. The Lee Shore.
CHAPTER
24. The Advocate.
CHAPTER
25. Postscript.
CHAPTER
26. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER
27. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER
28. Ahab, Captain.
CHAPTER
29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
CHAPTER
30. The Pipe.
CHAPTER
31. Queen Mab.
CHAPTER
32. Cetology.
CHAPTER
33. The Specksnyder.
CHAPTER
34. The Cabin-Table.
CHAPTER
35. The Mast-Head.
CHAPTER
36. The Quarter-Deck.
CHAPTER
37. Sunset.
CHAPTER
38. Dusk.
CHAPTER
39. First Night Watch.
CHAPTER
40. Midnight, Forecastle.
CHAPTER
41. Moby Dick.
CHAPTER
42. The Whiteness of The Whale.
CHAPTER
43. Hark!
CHAPTER
44. The Chart.
CHAPTER
45. The Affidavit.
CHAPTER
46. Surmises.
CHAPTER
47. The Mat-Maker.
CHAPTER
48. The First Lowering.
CHAPTER
49. The Hyena.
CHAPTER
50. Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
CHAPTER
51. The Spirit-Spout.
CHAPTER
52. The Albatross.
CHAPTER
53. The Gam.
CHAPTER
54. The Town-Ho's Story.
CHAPTER
55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
CHAPTER
56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
CHAPTER
57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in
CHAPTER
58. Brit.
CHAPTER
59. Squid.
CHAPTER
60. The Line.
CHAPTER
61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
CHAPTER
62. The Dart.
CHAPTER
63. The Crotch.
CHAPTER
64. Stubb's Supper.
CHAPTER
65. The Whale as a Dish.
CHAPTER
66. The Shark Massacre.
CHAPTER
67. Cutting In
CHAPTER
69. The Funeral.
CHAPTER
70. The Sphynx.
CHAPTER
71. The Jeroboam's Story.
CHAPTER
72. The Monkey-Rope.
CHAPTER
73. Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk
CHAPTER
74. The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER
75. The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER
76. The Battering-Ram.
CHAPTER
77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
CHAPTER
78. Cistern and Buckets.
CHAPTER
79. The Prairie.
CHAPTER
80. The Nut.
CHAPTER
81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
CHAPTER
82. The Honour and Glory of Whaling.
CHAPTER
83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
CHAPTER
84. Pitchpoling.
CHAPTER
85. The Fountain.
CHAPTER
86. The Tail.
CHAPTER
87. The Grand Armada.
CHAPTER
88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
CHAPTER
89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
CHAPTER
90. Heads or Tails.
CHAPTER
91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
CHAPTER
92. Ambergris.
CHAPTER
93. The Castaway.
CHAPTER
94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
CHAPTER
95. The Cassock.
CHAPTER
96. The Try-Works.
CHAPTER
97. The Lamp.
CHAPTER
98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
CHAPTER
99. The Doubloon.
CHAPTER
100. Leg and Arm.
CHAPTER
101. The Decanter.
CHAPTER
102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
CHAPTER
103. Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton.
CHAPTER
104. The Fossil Whale.
CHAPTER
105. Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
CHAPTER
106. Ahab's Leg.
CHAPTER
107. The Carpenter.
CHAPTER
108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
CHAPTER
109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
CHAPTER
110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
CHAPTER
111. The Pacific.
CHAPTER
112. The Blacksmith.
CHAPTER
113. The Forge.
CHAPTER
114. The Gilder.
CHAPTER
115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
CHAPTER
116. The Dying Whale.
CHAPTER
117. The Whale Watch.
CHAPTER
118. The Quadrant.
CHAPTER
119. The Candles.
CHAPTER
120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
CHAPTER
121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
CHAPTER
122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
CHAPTER
123. The Musket.
CHAPTER
124. The Needle.
CHAPTER
125. The Log and Line.
CHAPTER
126. The Life-Buoy.
CHAPTER
127. The Deck.
CHAPTER
128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
CHAPTER
129. The Cabin.
CHAPTER
130. The Hat.
CHAPTER
131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
CHAPTER
132. The Symphony.
CHAPTER
133. The Chase—First Day.
CHAPTER
134. The Chase—Second Day.
CHAPTER
135. The Chase.—Third Day.
Epilogue
Moby
Dick is the antogonist in this story of a great white 'bull' sperm whale that fought back at
whalers who tried to harpoon him.
The idea came to
Herman Melville after
he spent time on a commercial whaler, where stories abounded of the
sinking of the Essex in 1821 and Mocha
Dick, a giant sperm whale that sank around 20 ships, before being
harpooned in 1838.
Herman
realised how fixated the sailors became, and he also became with the
thought that there was a whale that nobody could catch, that represented
a real risk to the whalers hunting whales, in that it was more sport
than commercial operations.
Without
any doubt this is one of the greatest novels coming out of America at
this time and way off the beaten track, making it so interesting,
reflecting the state of whaling and the economic importance in the
developing the nation - giving the general public a taste of something
adventurous that most people never think about.
Many
films and graphic novel adaptations have been inspired by the writings
of Herman Melville, from Marvel
and Disney
comics with good cause.
One
such production in 2020 is a graphic novel about a giant humpback whale
called Kulo
Luna, that sinks a modern whaling boat, much as depicted in Herman
Melville's Moby
Dick, except that is this day and age whales have explosive harpoons
to contend with, and sonar, from which there is no escape.
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