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 harpooneer 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? Strikethe 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 oldMogul'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 lassies. Tell 'em it'sthe resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment.That's the way--that's it; thy throat ain't spoiled witheating Amsterdam butter.
FRENCH SAILOR
Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchorin 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 handby his right, and say to himself, how d'ye do? Partners! I musthave 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-bits;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 aredancing over. I'll dance over your grave, I will--that's the bitterestthreat 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 scholarshave 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-tideGanges 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 waveswere 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 fromPirohitee's peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drownthe 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'llgo 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 moreafraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Balticwith 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 mustalways 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 ladsto hunt him up his whale!
ALL
Aye! aye!
OLD MANX SAILOR
How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of treeto live when shifted to any other soil, and here there'snone 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 darkside 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 onecase 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 Cainstruck 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 goesthe jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comesthe 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 prospectsto '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 onlythis 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 himfrom all men that have no bowels to feel fear!
CHAPTER 41
Moby Dick