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in the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the shipā€™s stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere they would do the job. But Iā€™m made of knotty Aroostook hemlock; I donā€™t budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing about with a grave-yard tray! But never mind. We workers in woods make bridal bedsteads and card-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. Hem! Iā€™ll do the job, now, tenderly. Iā€™ll have meā€”letā€™s seeā€”how many in the shipā€™s company, all told? But Iā€™ve forgotten. Any way, Iā€™ll have me thirty separate, Turkā€™s-headed life-lines, each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down, thereā€™ll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and marling-spike! Letā€™s to it.ā€

CHAPTER 127

The Deck

The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted oakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.ā€”Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip following him.

Back lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand complies with my humor more genially than that boy.ā€” Middle aisle of a church! Whatā€™s here?ā€

ā€œLife-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuckā€™s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the hatchway!ā€

ā€œThank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.ā€

ā€œSir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does.ā€

ā€œArt not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy shop?ā€

ā€œI believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?ā€

ā€œWell enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?ā€

ā€œAye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but theyā€™ve set me now to turning it into something else.ā€

ā€œThen tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling, monopolizing, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a jack-of-all-trades.ā€

ā€œBut I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.ā€

ā€œThe gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the craters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in hand. Dost thou never?ā€

ā€œSing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, Iā€™m indifferent enough, sir, for that; but the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it.ā€

ā€œAye, and thatā€™s because the lid thereā€™s a sounding-board; and what in all things makes the sounding-board is thisā€” thereā€™s naught beneath. And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against the churchyard gate, going in?

ā€œFaith, sir, Iā€™ve-ā€

ā€œFaith? Whatā€™s that?ā€

ā€œWhy, faith, sir, itā€™s only a sort of exclamation-likeā€” thatā€™s all, sir.ā€

ā€œUm, um; go on.ā€

ā€œI was about to say, sir, that-ā€

ā€œArt thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself? Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.ā€

ā€œHe goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot latitudes. Iā€™ve heard that the Isle of Albermarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. Heā€™s always under the Lineā€”fiery hot, I tell ye! Heā€™s looking this wayā€”come, oakum; quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and Iā€™m the professor of musical glassesā€”tap, tap!ā€

(Ahab to himself)

ā€œThereā€™s a sight! Thereā€™s a sound! The greyheaded wood-pecker tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So manā€™s seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here nowā€™s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! Iā€™ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return again. Now, then, Pip, weā€™ll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee!ā€

CHAPTER 128

The Pequod Meets The Rachel

Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull.

ā€œBad news; she brings bad news,ā€ muttered the old Manxman. But ere her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he could hopefully hail, Ahabā€™s voice was heard.

ā€œHast seen the White Whale?ā€

ā€œAye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?ā€

Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this unexpected question; and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stranger captain himself, having stopped his vesselā€™s way, was seen descending her side. A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the Pequodā€™s main-chains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was recognized by Ahab for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal salutation was exchanged.

ā€œWhere was he?ā€”not killed!ā€”not killed!ā€ cried Ahab, closely advancing. ā€œHow was it?ā€

It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous, while three of the strangerā€™s boats were engaged with a shoal of whales, which had led them some four or five miles from the ship; and while they were yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and head of Moby Dick had suddenly loomed up out of the blue water, not very far to leeward; whereupon, the fourth rigged boatā€” a reserved oneā€”had been instantly lowered in chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this fourth boatā€”the swiftest keeled of allā€”seemed to have succeeded in fasteningā€”at least, as well as the man at the mast-head could tell anything about it. In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; and then a swift gleam of bubbling white water; and after that nothing more; whence it was concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with his pursuers, as often happens. There was some apprehension, but no positive alarm, as yet. The recall signals were placed in the rigging; darkness came on; and forced to pick up her three far to windward boatsā€”ere going in quest of the fourth one in the precisely opposite directionā€” the ship had not only been necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near midnight, but, for the time, to increase her distance from it. But the rest of her crew being at last safe aboard, she crowded all sailā€”stunsail on stunsailā€” after the missing boat; kindling a fire in her try-pots for a beacon; and every other man aloft on the look-out. But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain the presumed place of the absent ones when last seen; though she then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and not finding anything, had again dashed on; again paused, and lowered her boats; and though she had thus continued doing till daylight; yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.

The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal his object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with his own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five miles apart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were.

ā€œI will wager something now,ā€ whispered Stubb to Flask, ā€œthat some one in that missing boat wore off that Captainā€™s best coat; mayhap, his watchā€” heā€™s so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of two pious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height of the whaling season? See, Flask, only see how pale he looksā€” pale in the very buttons of his eyesā€”lookā€”it wasnā€™t the coatā€” it must have been the-ā€

ā€œMy boy, my own boy is among them. For Godā€™s sakeā€”I beg, I conjureā€ā€” here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far had but icily received his petition. ā€œFor eight-and-forty hours let me charter your shipā€”I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for itā€” if there be no other wayā€”for eight-and-forty hours onlyā€”only thatā€” you must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing.ā€

ā€œHis son!ā€ cried Stubb, ā€œoh, itā€™s his son heā€™s lost! I take back the coat and watchā€”what says Ahab? We must save that boy.ā€

ā€œHeā€™s drowned with the rest on ā€˜em, last night,ā€ said the old Manx sailor standing behind them; ā€œI heard; all of ye heard their spirits.ā€

Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the Rachelā€™s the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of the Captainā€™s sons among the number of the missing boatā€™s crew; but among the number of the other boatsā€™ crews, at the same time, but on the other hand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase, there had been still another son; as that for a time, the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity; which was only solved for him by his chief mateā€™s instinctively adopting the ordinary procedure of a whaleship in such emergencies, that is, when placed between jeopardized but divided boats, always to pick up the majority first. But the captain, for some unknown constitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning all this, and not till forced to it by Ahabā€™s iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old, whose father with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketerā€™s paternal love, had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his race. Nor does it unfrequently occur, that

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