The Grand Armada
The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward
from the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of
all Asia. In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long
islands of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others,
form a vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia,
and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly studded
oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports
for the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous among which are
the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda, chiefly,
vessels bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas.
Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing
midway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold
green promontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little
correspond to the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire:
and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks,
and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands
of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision
of nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of the land,
should at least bear the appearance, however ineffectual,
of being guarded from the all-grasping western world. The shores
of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering
fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic,
and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand
the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless
procession of ships before the wind, which for centuries past,
by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra
and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east.
But while they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by no
means renounce their claim to more solid tribute.
Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays,
lurking among the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra,
have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits,
fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears.
Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they have received
at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these corsairs
has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present day,
we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which,
in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.
With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these straits;
Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Java sea, and thence,
cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here and there
by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and gain
the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling season there.
By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod would sweep almost all the
known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world, previous to descending
upon the Line in the Pacific; where Ahab, though everywhere else
foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle to Moby Dick,
in the sea he was most known to frequent; and at a season when he might
most reasonably be presumed to be haunting it.
But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does
his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a
long time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his
fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but what's in himself.
So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the whaler. While other
hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred
to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries
no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and their wants.
She has a whole lake's contents bottled in her ample hold.
She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable
pig-lead and kentledge. She carries years' water in her.
Clear old prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat,
the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to drink before
the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks,
from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that,
while other ships may have gone to China from New York,
and back again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship,
in all that interval, may not have sighted one grain of soil;
her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves.
So that did you carry them the news that another flood had come;
they would only answer--"Well, boys, here's the ark!"
Now, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western
coast of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda;
indeed, as most of the ground, roundabout, was generally
recognised by the fishermen as an excellent spot for cruising;
therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more upon Java Head,
the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and admonished to keep wide awake.
But though the green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed on
the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon
was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was descried.
Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game hereabouts,
the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when the customary
cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle
of singular magnificence saluted us.
But here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity
with which of late they have been hunted over all four oceans,
the Sperm Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small
detached companies, as in former times, are now frequently met
with in extensive herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude,
that it would almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn
solemn league and covenant for mutual assistance and protection.
To this aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such immense caravans,
may be imputed the circumstance that even in the best cruising grounds,
you may now sometimes sail for weeks and months together,
without being greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly
saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands.
Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles,
and forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon,
a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling
in the noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets
of the Right Whale, which, dividing at top, falls over in two branches,
like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting
spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist,
continually rising and falling away to leeward.
Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill
of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually curling up into
the air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze,
showed like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis,
descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,
accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in
their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain;
even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through
the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle,
and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.
Crowding all sail the Pequod pressed after them; the harpooneers
handling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads
of their yet suspended boats. If the wind only held,
little doubt had they, that chased through these Straits
of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy into the Oriental
seas to witness the capture of not a few of their number.
And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan,
Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming,
like the worshipped white-elephant in the coronation procession
of the Siamese! So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail, we
sailed along, driving these leviathans before us; when, of a sudden,
the voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly directing attention
to something in our wake.
Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our rear.
It seemed formed of detached white vapors, rising and falling something
like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely come
and go; for they constantly hovered, without finally disappearing.
Levelling his glass at this sight, Ahab quickly revolved in his
pivot-hole, crying, "Aloft there, and rig whips and buckets to wet
the sails;--Malays, sir, and after us!"
As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod
should fairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics
were now in hot pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay.
But when the swift Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was herself
in hot chase; how very kind of these tawny philanthropists
to assist in speeding her on to her own chosen pursuit,--
mere riding-whips and rowels to her, that they were.
As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck;
in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased,
and in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him;
some such fancy as the above seemed his. And when he glanced
upon the green walls of the watery defile in which the ship
was then sailing, and bethought him that through that gate lay
the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same
gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end;
and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates
and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him
on with their curses;--when all these conceits had passed
through his brain, Ahab's brow was left gaunt and ribbed,
like the black sand beach after some stormy tide has been gnawing it,
without being able to drag the firm thing from its place.
But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and when,
after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod
at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side,
emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers
seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining upon
the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained
upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake of the whales,
at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared them;
and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the boats.
But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the
Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels that were after them,--
though as yet a mile in their rear,--than they rallied again, and forming
in close ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked like
flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.
Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash,
and after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce
the chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave
animating tokens that they were now at last under the influence
of that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the
fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied*. The
compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly
and steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout;
and like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander,
they seemed going mad with consternation. In all directions
expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither
and thither, by their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed
their distraction of panic. This was still more strangely evinced
by those of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were,
helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the sea.
Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep,
pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not
possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this occasional
timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures.
Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned
buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman.
Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold
of a theatre's pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire,
rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming,
and remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best, therefore,
withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us,
for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not
infinitely outdone by the madness of men.
* To gally, or gallow, is to frighten excessively--
to confound with fright. It is an old Saxon word.
It occurs once in Shakespeare:--
The wrathful skies Gallow the very wanderers of the dark And make
them keep their caves.
To common language, the word is now completely obsolete.
When the polite landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is
apt to set it down as one of the whaleman's self-derived savageries.
Much the same is it with many other sinewy Saxonisms of this sort,
which emigrated to New-England rocks with the noble brawn of the old
English emigrants in the time of the Commonwealth. Thus, some of
the best and furthest-descended English words--the etymological Howards
and Percys--are now democratised, nay, plebeianised--so to speak--
in the New World.
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither
advanced nor retreated, but collectively remained in one place.
As is customary in those cases, the boats at once separated,
each making for some one lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal.
In about three minutes' time, Queequeg's harpoon was flung;
the stricken fish darted blinding spray in our faces, and then
running away with us like light, steered straight for the heart
of the herd. Though such a movement on the part of the whale
struck under such circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented;
and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated; yet does it
present one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery.
For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the
frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist
in a delirious throb.
As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power
of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him;
as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced
as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us;
our beset boat was like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest,
and striving to steer through their complicated channels and straits,
knowing not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed.
But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering
off from this monster directly across our route in advance;
now edging away from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead,
while all the time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand,
pricking out of our way whatever whales he could reach by short darts,
for there was no time to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen
quite idle, though their wonted duty was now altogether dispensed with.
They chiefly attended to the shouting part of the business.
"Out of the way, Commodore!" cried one, to a great dromedary that of
a sudden rose bodily to the surface, and for an instant threatened
to swamp us. "Hard down with your tail, there!" cried a second
to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cooling
himself with his own fan-like extremity.
All whale-boats carry certain curious contrivances,
originally invented by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs.
Two thick squares of wood of equal size are stoutly
clenched together, so that they cross each other's grain at
right angles; a line of considerable length is then attached
to the middle of this block, and the other end of the line
being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon.
It is chiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is used.
For then, more whales are close round you than you can
possibly chase at one time. But sperm whales are not every
day encountered; while you may, then, you must kill all you can.
And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing them,
so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it is,
that at times like these the drug, comes into requisition.
Our boat was furnished with three of them. The first and second were
successfully darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly running off,
fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg.
They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball.
But upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard
the clumsy wooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat,
and in an instant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the
oarsman in the boat's bottom as the seat slid from under him.
On both sides the sea came in at the wounded planks, but we
stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in, and so stopped
the leaks for the time.
It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons,
were it not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale's way
greatly diminished; moreover, that as we went still further
and further from the circumference of commotion, the direful
disorders seemed waning. So that when at last the jerking
harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways vanished;
then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we glided
between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if
from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake.
Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales,
were heard but not felt. In this central expanse the sea
presented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek,
produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale
in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted
calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion.
And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of
the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales,
eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied
spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder,
that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have over-arched
the middle ones, and so have gone round on their backs.
Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing whales,
more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd,
no possible chance of escape was at present afforded us.
We must watch for a breach in the living wall that hemmed us in;
the wall that had only admitted us in order to shut us up.
Keeping at the centre of the lake, we were occasionally
visited by small tame cows and calves; the women and children
of this routed host.
Now, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between
the revolving outer circles, and inclusive of the spaces
between the various pods in any one of those circles,
the entire area at this juncture, embraced by the whole multitude,
must have contained at least two or three square miles.
At any rate--though indeed such a test at such a time might
be deceptive--spoutings might be discovered from our low boat
that seemed playing up almost from the rim of the horizon.
I mention this circumstance, because, as if the cows and
calves had been purposely locked up in this innermost fold;
and as if the wide extent of the herd had hitherto prevented them
from learning the precise cause of its stopping; or, possibly,
being so young, unsophisticated, and every way innocent
and inexperienced; however it may have been, these smaller whales--
now and then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the lake--
evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a still
becharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at.
Like household dogs they came snuffling round us,
right up to our gunwales, and touching them; till it almost
seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated them.
Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched their backs
with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the time
refrained from darting it.
But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and
still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side.
For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms
of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their
enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I
have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent;
and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze
away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time;
and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually
feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;--even so did the young
of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us,
as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight.
Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us.
One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed
hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length,
and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet
his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it
had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head,
and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a
Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes,
still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's
ears newly arrived from foreign parts.
"Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale;
"him fast! him fast!--Who line him! Who struck?--Two whale;
one big, one little!"
"What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck.
"Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing down.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled
out hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding,
he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling line
buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now,
Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan,
by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam.
Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this natural line,
with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the hempen one,
so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest secrets
of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond.
We saw young Leviathan amours in the deep.*
*The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan,
but unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons;
after a gestation which may probably be set down at nine months,
producing but one at a time; though in some few known instances
giving birth to an Esau and Jacob:--a contingency provided for
in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one on each side
of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from that.
When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by
the hunter's lance, the mother's pouring milk and blood rivallingly
discolor the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet and rich;
it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries.
When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales salute more hominum.
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations
and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre
freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments;
yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight.
But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being,
do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm;
and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me,
deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal
mildness of joy.
Meanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic
spectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats,
still engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host;
or possibly carrying on the war within the first circle,
where abundance of room and some convenient retreats were afforded them.
But the sight of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting
to and fro across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes.
It is sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly
powerful and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were,
by sundering or maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by
darting a short-handled cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope
for hauling it back again. A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned)
in this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken away
from the boat, carrying along with him half of the harpoon line;
and in the extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now dashing
among the revolving circles like the lone mounted desperado Arnold,
at the battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he went.
But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling
spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which
he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause
which at first the intervening distance obscured from us.
But at length we perceived that by one of the unimaginable accidents
of the fishery, this whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line
that he towed; he had also run away with the cutting-spade in him;
and while the free end of the rope attached to that weapon,
had permanently caught in the coils of the harpoon-line round
his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose from his flesh.
So that tormented to madness, he was now churning through the water,
violently flailing with his flexible tail, and tossing the keen
spade about him, wounding and murdering his own comrades.
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted
by half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly
to heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished;
in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central circles
began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was departing.
A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the tumultuous
masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in Spring,
the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner centre,
as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain. Instantly Starbuck
and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck taking the stern.
"Oars! Oars!" he intensely whispered, seizing the helm--"gripe
your oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by!
Shove him off, you Queequeg--the whale there!--prick him!--hit him!
Stand up--stand up, and stay so! Spring men--pull, men; never mind
their backs--scrape them!--scrape away!"
The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks,
leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths.
But by desperate endeavor we at last shot into a temporary opening;
then giving way rapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching
for another outlet. After many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at
last swiftly glided into what had just been one of the outer circles,
but now crossed by random whales, all violently making for one centre.
This lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg's
hat, who, while standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales,
had his hat taken clean from his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden
tossing of a pair of broad flukes close by.
Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was,
it soon resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement;
for having clumped together at last in one dense body,
they then renewed their onward flight with augmented fleetness.
Further pursuit was useless; but the boats still lingered in their
wake to pick up what drugged whales might be dropped astern,
and likewise to secure one which Flask had killed and waited.
The waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of which are carried
by every boat; and which, when additional game is at hand,
are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale,
both to mark its place on the sea, and also as token of
prior possession, should the boats of any other ship draw near.
The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that
sagacious saying in the Fishery,--the more whales the less fish.
Of all the drugged whales only one was captured.
The rest contrived to escape for the time, but only to be taken,
as will hereafter be seen, by some other craft than the Pequod.
