Moby Dick

luck to ye, Mr. Flask--good-bye and good luck to ye all--
and this day three years I'll have a hot supper smoking for ye
in old Nantucket.  Hurrah and away!"

"God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men," murmured old Bildad,
almost incoherently.  "I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so that
Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye--a pleasant sun is all he needs,
and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go.  Be careful
in the hunt, ye mates.  Don't stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers;
good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent within the year.
Don't forget your prayers, either.  Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don't
waste the spare staves.  Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker.
Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but don't miss a fair
chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts.  Have an eye
to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought.
If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication.
Good-bye, good-bye! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold,
Mr. Starbuck; it'll spoil.  Be careful with the butter--twenty cents
the pound it was, and mind ye, if--"

"Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,--away!" and with that,
Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.

Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between;
a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled;
we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate
into the lone Atlantic.



CHAPTER 23

The Lee Shore


Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall,
newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive
bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her
helm but Bulkington!  I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness
upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years'
dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still
another tempestuous term.  The land seemed scorching to his feet.
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories
yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave
of Bulkington.  Let me only say that it fared with him as with
the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land.
The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful;
in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper,
warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities.
But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy;
she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it
but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.
With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,
fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward;
seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake
forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington?  Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally
intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid
effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea;
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on
the treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God--so better is it to perish in that howling infinite,
than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!
For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain?
Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington!  Bear thee grimly, demigod!
Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up,
leaps thy apotheosis!



CHAPTER 24

The Advocate


As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling;
and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among
landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am
all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done
to us hunters of whales.

In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish
the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not
accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions.
If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society,
it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he
presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the
naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery)
to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed preeminently
presuming and ridiculous.

Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring
us whalemen, is this:  they think that, at best, our vocation
amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively