The Jeroboam's Story
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 distance,
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, 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 the boat's crew
remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off,
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; 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 coat 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:
He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of
Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked,
secret meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way
of a trapdoor, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial,
which he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of
containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum.
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.
He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, 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. 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 vials--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. But when, some year or two afterwards,
Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey,
the chief mate, burned with ardor 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, on 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, 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,--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.
