The Mat-Maker
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging
about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored 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 revelry
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;
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--no wise 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.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound
so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly,
that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood
gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing.
High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego.
His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out
like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries.
To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being
heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's look-outs
perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could
that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence
as from Tashtego the Indian's.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly
and eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought
him some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate,
and by those wild cries announcing their coming.
"There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"
"Where-away?"
"On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!"
Instantly all was commotion.
The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating
and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this
fish from other tribes of his genus.
"There go flukes!" was now the cry from Tashtego;
and the whales disappeared.
"Quick, steward!" cried Ahab. "Time! time!"
Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact
minute to Ahab.
The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently
rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales
had gone down heading to leeward, we confidently looked
to see them again directly in advance of our bows.
For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale when,
sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless,
while concealed beneath the surface, mills around, and swiftly
swims off in the opposite quarter--this deceitfulness of his
could not now be in action; for there was no reason to suppose
that the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed,
or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selected
for shipkeepers--that is, those not appointed to the boats,
by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head.
The sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line
tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust out;
the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over
the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs.
Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung
to the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale.
So look the long line of man-of-war's men about to throw
themselves on board an enemy's ship.
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab,
who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed
out of air.
