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_ Steering now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her
progress solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod
held on her path towards the Equator. Making so long a passage
through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long,
sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously
mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous
and desperate scene.
At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the
Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before
the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch--then
headed by Flask--was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and
unearthly--like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all
Herod's murdered Innocents--that one and all, they started from their
reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned
all transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that
wild cry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of
the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan
harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman--the oldest
mariner of all--declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were
heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea.
Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when
he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not
unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and
thus explained the wonder.
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great
numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or
some dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and
kept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of
wail. But this only the more affected some of them, because most
mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising
not only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from
the human look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen
peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under
certain circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for
men.
But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At
sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;
and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for
sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was
thus with the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may,
he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard--a cry and a
rushing--and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and
looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of
the sea.
The life-buoy--a long slender cask--was dropped from the stern, where
it always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to
seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had
shrunken, so that it slowly filled, and that parched wood also
filled at its every pore; and the studded iron-bound cask followed
the sailor to the bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in
sooth but a hard one.
And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look
out for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground;
that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of
that at the time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at
this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a
foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an
evil already presaged. They declared that now they knew the reason
of those wild shrieks they had heard the night before. But again the
old Manxman said nay.
The lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to
see to it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and
as in the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of
the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was
directly connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to
be; therefore, they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided
with a buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg
hinted a hint concerning his coffin.
"A life-buoy of a coffin!" cried Starbuck, starting.
"Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb.
"It will make a good enough one," said Flask, "the carpenter here can
arrange it easily."
"Bring it up; there's nothing else for it," said Starbuck, after a
melancholy pause. "Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so--the
coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it."
"And shall I nail down the lid, sir?" moving his hand as with a
hammer.
"Aye."
"And shall I caulk the seams, sir?" moving his hand as with a
caulking-iron.
"Aye."
"And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?" moving his hand
as with a pitch-pot.
"Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin,
and no more.--Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me."
"He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he
baulks. Now I don't like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and
he wears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and
he won't put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing
with that coffin? And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy of it.
It's like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other
side now. I don't like this cobbling sort of business--I don't like
it at all; it's undignified; it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats
do tinkerings; we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but
clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that
regularly begins at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway,
and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler's job, that's at
an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end. It's the old
woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection
all old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five
who ran away with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that's the
reason I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore, when I
kept my job-shop 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 ship'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 I'm
made of knotty Aroostook hemlock; I don'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!
I'll do the job, now, tenderly. I'll have me--let's see--how many in
the ship's company, all told? But I've forgotten. Any way, I'll
have me thirty separate, Turk's-headed life-lines, each three feet
long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down,
there'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! Let's to it." _
Read next: CHAPTER 127 The Deck.
Read previous: CHAPTER 125 The Log and Line.
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