I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor.
What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude?
Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honour to Alexander the Great?
CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own.
Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats.
Some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale.
As a general thing, these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats' crews.
But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper.
It was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation.
Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.
In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven in one eccentric span.
But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race.
For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days.
Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets.
But Pip loved life, and all life's peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine.
So, though in the clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases.
Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King of Hell.
But let us to the story.
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness; but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.
Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat.
The involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water.
That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around his chest and neck.
Tashtego stood in the bows.
He was full of the fire of the hunt.
He hated Pip for a poltroon.
Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively,
"Cut?"
Meantime Pip's blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake!
All passed in a flash.
In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
"Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was saved.
So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew.
Tranquilly permitting these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome advice.
The substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except—but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is.
Now, in general, STICK TO THE BOAT, is your true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when LEAP FROM THE BOAT, is still better.
Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command,
"Stick to the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that.
We can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama.
Bear that in mind, and don't jump any more."
Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.
But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again.
It was under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale started to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller's trunk.
Alas!
Stubb was but too true to his word.
It was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater's skin hammered out to the extremest.
Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip's ebon head showed like a head of cloves.
No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly astern.
Stubb's inexorable back was turned upon him; and the whale was winged.