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CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin. FOOTNOTES

CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.

The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,1 Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen.2

At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with their flag in the Pacific.

For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to,3 and dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the bows instead of the stern.

“What has he in his hand there?” cried Starbuck, pointing to something wavingly held by the German. “Impossible!—a lamp-feeder!”4

“Not that,” said Stubb, “no, no, it’s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he’s coming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman;5 don’t you see that big tin can there alongside of him?—that’s his boiling water. Oh! he’s all right, is the Yarman.”

“Go along with you,” cried Flask, “it’s a lamp-feeder and an oil-can. He’s out of oil, and has come a-begging.”

However curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle,6 yet sometimes such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.

As he mounted the deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all heeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in profound darkness—his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.

His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his ship’s side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.

Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod’s keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger, they were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness. They left a great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great wide parchment upon the sea.

Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters behind him to upbubble.

“Who’s got some paregoric?”7 said Stubb, “he has the stomach-ache, I’m afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It’s the first foul wind8 I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw9 so before? it must be, he’s lost his tiller.”

As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck load of frightened horses, careens, buries,10 rolls, and wallows on her way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were hard to say.

“Only wait a bit, old chap, and I’ll give ye a sling for that wounded arm,” cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.

“Mind he don’t sling thee with it,” cried Starbuck. “Give way, or the German will have him.”

With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were going with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time. At this juncture the Pequod’s keels had shot by the three German boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had, Derick’s boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being already so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron before they could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite confident that this would be the case, and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats.

“The ungracious and ungrateful dog!” cried Starbuck; “he mocks and dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!”—then in his old intense whisper—“Give way, greyhounds! Dog to it!”11

“I tell ye what it is, men”—cried Stubb to his crew—“it’s against my religion to get mad; but I’d like to eat that villainous Yarman—Pull—won’t ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why don’t some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who’s that been dropping an anchor overboard—we don’t budge an inch—we’re becalmed. Halloo, here’s grass growing in the boat’s bottom—and by the Lord, the mast there’s budding. This won’t do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?”

“Oh! see the suds he makes!” cried Flask, dancing up and down—“What a hump—Oh, do pile on the beef—lays like a log! Oh! my lads, do spring—slap-jacks and quahogs12 for supper, you know, my lads—baked clams and muffins—oh, do, do, spring,—he’s a hundred barreller—don’t lose him now—don’t oh, don’t!—see that Yarman—Oh, won’t ye pull for your duff,13 my lads—such a sog!14 such a sogger! Don’t ye love sperm? There goes three thousand dollars, men!—a bank!—a whole bank! The bank of England!—Oh, do, do, do!—What’s that Yarman about now?”

At this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the advancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view of retarding his rivals’ way, and at the same time economically accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.

“The unmannerly Dutch dogger!”15 cried Stubb. “Pull now, men, like fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d’ye say, Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces for the honor of old Gayhead? What d’ye say?”

“I say, pull like god-dam,”—cried the Indian.

Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Pequod’s three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed, momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman16 with an exhilarating cry of, “There she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze!17 Down with the Yarman! Sail over him!”

But so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the blade18 of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick’s boat was nigh to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;—that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they took a mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German’s quarter.19 An instant more, and all four boats were diagonically in the whale’s immediate wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.

It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now going head out,20 and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.

Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod’s boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.

But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three tigers—Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo—instinctively sprang to their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and white-fire!21 The three boats, in the first fury of the whale’s headlong rush, bumped the German’s aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.

“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,”22 cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon them as he shot by; “ye’ll be picked up presently—all right—I saw some sharks astern—St. Bernard’s dogs, you know—relieve distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah!—Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury23 on a plain—makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way; and there’s danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he’s going to Davy Jones24—all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!”

But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them; while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at last—owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue—the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this “holding on,” as it is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is always the best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the enormous surface of him—in a full grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square feet—the pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres.25 One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships,26 with all their guns, and stores, and men on board.

As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight27 to an eight day clock.28 Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature29 of whom it was once so triumphantly said—“Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon:30 he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!” This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments31 should follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea,32 to hide him from the Pequod’s fish-spears!

In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes’ army.33 Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!

“Stand by, men; he stirs,” cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by magnetic wires,34 the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in great part from the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are scared from it into the sea.

“Haul in! Haul in!” cried Starbuck again; “he’s rising.”

The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand’s breadth could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two ship’s lengths of the hunters.

His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure35 of water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady jets from the new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its affrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him had thus far been struck. His life,36 as they significantly call it, was untouched.

As the boats now more closely surrounded him,37 the whole upper part of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale’s eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely discoloured bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel,38 low down on the flank.

“A nice spot,” cried Flask; “just let me prick him there once.”

“Avast!” cried Starbuck, “there’s no need of that!”

But humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask’s boat and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground—so the last long dying spout of the whale.

Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately, by Starbuck’s orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords. By very heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom.

It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch39 before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone40 being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when? It might have been darted by some Nor’ West Indian41 long before America was discovered.

What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries, by the ship’s being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea, owing to the body’s immensely increasing tendency to sink. However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with the body; then, when the command was given to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads42 to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows43 were brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going over.

“Hold on, hold on, won’t ye?” cried Stubb to the body, “don’t be in such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something or go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains.”

“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter’s heavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing at the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the carcase sank.44

Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.

Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale; his Venetian blinds45 alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling,46 on soundings,47 among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again.

It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from the Pequod’s mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back,48 belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back’s spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale’s, that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail,49 made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.

Is this the creature: “Is this the Leviathan of the Bible?” In the book of Job, God tests Job’s faith by allowing Satan to inflict upon him a series of misfortunes. Job withstands the afflictions (although not without some periods of doubt), and in the book’s penultimate Chapter 41, God challenges the presumption that prideful humans can ever capture the uncapturable (and crocodilian) creature, called “leviathan.” In describing the seemingly impossible capture of a harpooned whale that has plunged deep into the sea to escape its human predators, Ishmael quotes directly, at the end of this sentence, from five verses of Job 41. The full text of those verses from the King James Version is as follows, with Ishmael’s excisions noted here in brackets:7 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears? [
] / 26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. / 27 He esteemeth iron as straw, [and brass as rotten wood.] / 28 The arrow cannot make him flee: [sling-stones are turned with him into stubble.] / 29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.*

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. Jungfrau: this means “virgin” or “maiden” in German ↩

  2. Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen: The Jungfrau (Virgin) is a ship from the German port of Bremen, skippered by a Dutch captain, whose name “De Deer” may be a play on “die deerne,” meaning wench, hussy, or woman of loose morals; the implication is that, given the ship’s name, its master Derick is a womanizer; Bremen: a port city in northwestern Germany. ↩

  3. Rounded to: turned the bow of the ship into the wind ↩

  4. Lamp-feeder: a vessel with a narrow spout, for pouring oil into a lamp ↩

  5. Yarman: German ↩

  6. Carrying coals to Newcastle:  doing something pointless since coal was mined near Newcastle on Tyne, in northeast England. ↩

  7. Paregoric: a medicinal preparation containing powdered camphor and opium, used to treat indigestion and gas (incl colicky children) ↩

  8. foul wind: ominous “ill-wind,” but, here, fart. ↩

  9. Yaw: move unsteadily, weave ↩

  10. buries: that is, “buries its bow in the waves.” ↩

  11. Dog to it!: “Stick to the chase!” (as would a hunting dog). ↩

  12. Quohogs: hard-shell clams ↩

  13. Duff: pudding made of flour and cooking grease. ↩

  14. Sog: such a sog! such a sogger: “such a large whale! something really large and heavy!” ↩

  15. Dutch dogger: a two-masted fishing ship, and here, also its captain. ↩

  16. backing the after oarsman: assisting the oarsman closest to the mate by pushing on the oar. ↩

  17. White-ash breeze: the power of rowing. Oars, frequently made of white ash wood, were used to move a sailboat when there was no real breeze ↩

  18. A crab which caught the blade: a wave that hits the blade wrong (because of the clumsiness of the rower) ↩

  19. ranged up on the German’s quarter: closed in alongside the rear of the German boat. ↩

  20. Going head out: swimming with its head jutting out of the water at an angle ↩

  21. White-fire: whitecap waves ↩

  22. Butter-boxes: Dutch guys (said contemptuously). A butterbox is a wooden box for forming churned butter into blocks ↩

  23. Tilbury: a light, open, two-wheeled carriage ↩

  24. Many folklorists believe Davy Jones is a corruption of “Duffy Jonah” or “Duppy Jonah,” with ‘Duppy’ originating from African/West Indian folklore meaning ghost or spirit, and ‘Jones’ coming from Jonah. ↩

  25. fifty atmospheres: Fifty times the air pressure at sea level. ↩

  26. line-of-battle ships: Largest contemporary warships ↩

  27. The big weight: the heaviest of three weights on a grandfather clock—the one that powers the chimes ↩

  28. Eight day clock: a clock that only needs to be wound every eight days (as opposed to every 30 hours) ↩

  29. See long note above. ↩

  30. Habergeon: a vest of chain mail armor ↩

  31. Unfulfilments: the state of not having their predictions come true ↩

  32. under the mountains of the sea: The phrase recalls Jonah 2:6, which in most translations, including Melville’s general biblical resource, the King James version, is “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains.” Melville’s usage may derive from Rev. Edward Barlee’s revision, “mountains of the sea” (his italics), in his 1839 An Explanatory Version of the Minor Prophets, which, according to Brian Yothers, was available in the U.S. and can be found in several translations that appeared after the publication of Moby-Dick. If Melville did not meet with Barlee’s Explanatory Version at home, he might have encountered it during his 1849 visit to London. ↩

  33. Half Xerxes’ army: Xerxes I, who ruled the Persian Empire from 485-465 B.C., was said to have an army of 2 million soldiers ↩

  34. magnetic wires: The electromagnetic telegraph was introduced at the 1845 Democratic Convention, attended by Melville’s brother Gansevoort. In the early 1830s, as students at Albany Academy, both brothers would have studied under the math and physics teacher, Joseph Henry, who later taught at Princeton and went on to head the Smithsonian Institution. In his basement lab at the Academy, Henry conducted safe electrical experiments for the boys, including the parlor game of making a circuit with students holding hands in order to feel an electric shock running through them. Later, Melville would develop this experience into images of connection and recognition in Redburn, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” and “the life and death throbs of the whale” here in Moby-Dick. See Bryant, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life, vol. 1, ch. 8. ↩

  35. extraordinary pressure: Melville is physiologically incorrect; the bleeding rate is actually the same at any depth. ↩

  36. life: lungs; also “life spot” at the end of ch. 84. ↩

  37. As the boats now more closely surrounded him: Mansfield and Vincent (777) suggest that the following description probably derives from Thomas Beale, The Natural History of the Sperm Whale. The same is true for other passages in this episode. ↩

  38. Bushel: a container that holds about 35 liters ↩

  39. Bunch: swelling ↩

  40. lance-head of stone: According to Mansfield and Vincent (777–78), Melville borrowed from William Scoresby’s listing of similar spearhead relics, used as evidence of an Arctic passage connecting the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans (see Account of the Arctic Regions). Whereas Scoresby speculates that the indigenous spearheads attest to whales living a hundred years, Ishmael exaggerates the whale’s legendary longevity, extending it impossibly to the pre-Columbian era. Though some whales have long lifespans, few live much longer than 60 years. ↩

  41. Nor’ West Indian: a Native American on one of the northernmost coasts of North America, either east or west ↩

  42. Timber-heads: the upper end of a thick post that sticks up above the deck and is used to secure ropes ↩

  43. handspikes and crows: levers used for turning a windlass, and crowbars. ↩

  44. the carcase sank: Queequeg’s desperate attempt to cut the iron chain with a steel hatchet derives from Frederick Debell Bennett, Narrative of a Whaling Voyage round the Globe: “it has been found requisite to chop asunder an iron chain, which held a large and sinking whale, to save a ship from the destructive effects of so ponderous a body” (2.208). ↩

  45. Venetian blinds: that is, his baleen ↩

  46. Shore Whaling: the practice of hunting whales with boats from the shoreline, rather than from ships ↩

  47. on soundings: in water shallow enough to be measured. ↩

  48. Fin-Back: Fin whale ↩

  49. Crowding all sail: spreading all the sails to increase speed ↩

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