🎤039 Moby Full Text Ch71

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[[#CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story.[ 1]]] FOOTNOTES

CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story.¹

Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock.

By and by, through the glass the stranger’s boats and manned mast-heads proved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what response would be made.

Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at considerable distances and with no small facility.

The Pequod’s signal was at last responded to by the stranger’s setting her own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her yards,² she bore down, ranged abeam under the Pequod’s lee, and lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was being rigged by Starbuck’s order to accommodate the visiting captain, the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat’s stern in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, was fearful of infecting the Pequod’s company. For, though himself and boat’s crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off,³ and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between; yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with the Pequod.

But this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an interval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam’s boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it blew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback;⁴ though, indeed, at times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings again. Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then, a conversation was sustained between the two parties; but at intervals not without still another interruption of a very different sort.

Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam’s boat, was a man of a singular appearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat⁵ of a faded walnut tinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed—“That’s he! that’s he!—the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho’s company told us of!” Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time previous when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story was this: **[ Scaramouche from the Commedia dell’arte He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna Shakers,⁶ where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a trap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial,⁷ which he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum.⁸ A strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, common-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboam’s whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway upon the ship’s getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet.⁹ He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel,¹⁰ and commanded the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica.¹¹ The unflinching earnestness with which he declared these things;—the dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship, especially as he refused to work except when he pleased, the incredulous captain would fain have been rid of him; but apprised that that individual’s intention was to land him in the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and vials¹²—devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in case this intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain. He was therefore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or do what he would; so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship. The consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared little or nothing for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had broken out, he carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the plague, as he called it, was at his sole command; nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god. Such things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true. Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return to the Pequod.

“I fear not thy epidemic, man,” said Ahab from the bulwarks, to Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat’s stern; “come on board.”

But now Gabriel started to his feet.

“Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible plague!”

“Gabriel! Gabriel!” cried Captain Mayhew; “thou must either—” But that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings drowned all speech.

“Hast thou seen the White Whale?” demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted back.

“Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the horrible tail!”

“I tell thee again, Gabriel, that—” But again the boat tore ahead as if dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm whale’s head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to warrant.

When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed leagued with him.

It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible.¹³ But when, some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him; and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all the archangel’s denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat’s bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman’s head; but the mate for ever sank.

It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated; oftener the boat’s bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body. But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one, when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is discernible; the man being stark dead.

The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek—“The vial! the vial!” Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with added influence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror to the ship.

Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put such questions to him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which Ahab answered—“Aye.” Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with downward pointed finger—“Think, think of the blasphemer—dead, and down there!—beware of the blasphemer’s end!”

Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, “Captain, I have just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag.”

Every whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed, depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans. Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received after attaining an age of two or three years or more.

Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy.

“Can’st not read it?” cried Ahab. “Give it me, man. Aye, aye, it’s but a dim scrawl;—what’s this?” As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to the ship.

Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, “Mr. Har—yes, Mr. Harry—(a woman’s pinny hand,¹⁴—the man’s wife, I’ll wager)—Aye—Mr. Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam;—why it’s Macey, and he’s dead!”

“Poor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife,” sighed Mayhew; “but let me have it.”

“Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou art soon going that way.”

“Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab. “Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive it”; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat drifted a little towards the ship’s stern; so that, as if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel’s eager hand. He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab’s feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair.

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Notes

Re: Shakers - I asked the internet about Shakers vs Davening:

Shakers and Hasidic Jews do not have a direct historical or theological connection in their practices of “shaking,” though both traditions utilize intense physical movement as a way to engage the entire body in worship and deepen spiritual focus

. While they share similar outward expressions of devotion—both moving vigorously while praying—these behaviors stem from completely different origins and beliefs. Ohio History Connection +4

Shaker Worship (“Shaking”)

• Origin: Founded in 18th-century England (later moving to America) by Ann Lee, the Shakers were originally part of the “Shaking Quakers”.
• Purpose: The shaking, dancing, and rhythmic movement were forms of ecstatic worship designed to shake off sin and feel the presence of God.
• Development: Early Shaker worship was spontaneous and chaotic, characterized by dancing and speaking in tongues. It later evolved into more ordered dances, and in the 20th century, toward quiet hymn singing. EBSCO +2

Hasidic Worship (“Davening” / Shuckling)

• Origin: Hasidism is a 18th-century Eastern European Jewish mystical revival movement. The movement began with a focus on joy and intense personal prayer.
• Purpose: Known as shuckling (Yiddish for “to shake” or “to rock”), this back-and-forth swaying during prayer or studying Torah is used to increase concentration, ward off distraction, and engage the whole body in prayer (citing Psalms 35:10, “All my bones shall say…”).
• Mystical Meaning: Hasidic mystics (like the Baal Shem Tov) interpret this movement as the soul trying to escape the physical body and re-attach to its source, similar to a candle flame flickering. Another traditional interpretation is that it mimics the trembling of the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. 

Comparison and Key Differences

• Shared Physicality: Both traditions share the goal of engaging the body, not just the mind, in worship.
• Different Origins: Shaker movements grew from a desire for ecstatic, spirit-filled charismatic experiences, often in a group setting. Hasidic shuckling is primarily a meditative technique focusing on intense personal concentration.
• No Historical Link: The movements originated independently of each other. While the Shakers were considered “radicals” who broke from traditional Protestantism, Hasidic Judaism was a mystical movement focusing on emotional devotion within traditional Jewish law

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Footnotes

Footnotes

1. Jearboam - Idol-worshiping king of Israel whom God punished for impiousness by withering his hand. His disastrous reign is narrated in 1 Kings 11–22, and his impiety is frequently alluded to elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). He is in some ways analogous to the biblical Ahab, against whom Elijah prophesied (1 Kings). The prophet Ahijah correctly foresaw Jeroboam’s ultimate defeat, making him analogous to the other true prophets in Moby-Dick, such as Jonah (Ch. 9), Elijah (19, 21), Tistig (16), and Fedallah (117), and contrasted with the false prophets “Gabriel” (71) and Ahab (37). ↩

2. Squaring her yards: arranging the sails so that the wind was from directly behind the ship; squaring her yards … ranged abeam under the Pequod’s lee: turning the yards and their sails to right angles with its hull, the Jeroboam sails downwind until it is parallel to and downwind of the Pequod. ↩

3. Half a rifle-shot off: probably about 500 yards away ↩

4. Aback: arranged so that a wind pushes against the front side ↩

5. The cabala/kaballah/… is a form of mysticism. (There are 24 different ways to spell “cabala”. In general the initial ‘C’ is used by Christians, ‘K’ by Jews, and ‘Q’ by occultists.) ↩

6. Neskyeuna Shakers: Originally an eighteenth-century Quaker offshoot in England, the celibate, communitarian Shakers (so-called because of their movements while dancing in religious ceremonies) settled at Niskayuna, New York, north of Albany, and were led by Mother Ann Lee, regarded as the incarnation of Christ. Melville owned a history of the sect’s practices titled A Summary View of the Millenial Church, or United Society of Believers, Commonly Called Shakers, and he had visited Shaker villages near his home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. ↩

7. Revelation 15:7 says, “And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who liveth for ever and ever.” Not surprisingly, the Bible does not describe the contents as gunpowder, which was invented in China in the 9th century and did not reach Europe until the 13th. Laudanum was first conceived in the 16th century. ↩

8. gunpowder vs laudenum - I think this is a Melville joke - Gabriel’s mastery of the Mysteries was supposed to be a big hit, but really put everyone to sleep. ↩

9. freshet: the flood of a river from heavy rain or melted snow, or a rush of fresh water into the sea. ↩

10. The “archangel Gabriel” is not listed as an archangel in the Old Testament, but is in the New Testament, where he has a much more important role. However, his identification as the trumpeter is not Biblical but dates back only to about 1465 in Byzantine culture, and not until John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) in English; Archangel Gabriel: The mad sailor has chosen for himself an identity of power, one of the archangels in Christianity, and an Heraldic/deliverer of revelations Angel in Jewish (Gavriel - Book of Daniel) and Islamic (Jibril) belief. Biblically, Gabriel is God’s messenger for matters of great importance including— as “Gabriel” does here — the end of the world. ↩

11. vicar-general of all Oceanica: Specifically, a vicar-general is a representative of a bishop; it is also a title for the pope, Christ’s agent on earth. Here, Gabriel claims to be God’s officer over all the Pacific islands, usually called Oceania. ↩

12. Seals and vials: In addition to the opened vials, above, Revelation 6 tells of the Lamb’s opening seven seals, revealing the coming wrath of God. ↩

13. the Shakers receiving the Bible: That is, the Shakers accepted the authority of the Bible. Christians have long debated whether to take the Bible literally, and which interpretation or translation to trust. Shakers believed that Jesus was one manifestation of the Christ, and their founder, Mother Ann, another. Here, Gabriel seems to take Moby Dick as a similar incarnation. See Neskyeuna Shakers, above. ↩

14. pinny = pinafore, so feminine handwriting ↩