Moby Dick

Above, you have all the Leviathans of note.  But there are a rabble
of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an
American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally.
I shall enumerate them by their fore-castle appellations;
for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators,
who may complete what I have here but begun.  If any of
the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked,
then he can readily be incorporated into this System,
according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:--
The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale;
the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale;
the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale;
the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; &c. From Icelandic, Dutch,
and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists
of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names.
But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help
suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism,
but signifying nothing.

Finally:  It was stated at the outset, that this system would not
be here, and at once, perfected.  You cannot but plainly see that I
have kept my word.  But I now leave my cetological System standing
thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left,
with the cranes still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower.
For small erections may be finished by their first architects;
grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity.
God keep me from ever completing anything.  This whole
book is but a draught--nay, but the draught of a draught.
Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!



CHAPTER 33

The Specksynder



Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place
as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board,
arising from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers,
a class unknown of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.

The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is
evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery,
two centuries and more ago, the command of a whale-ship was not
wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided
between him and an officer called the Specksynder.  Literally this
word means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time made it equivalent
to Chief Harpooneer.  In those days, the captain's authority was
restricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel;
while over the whale-hunting department and all its concerns,
the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme.
In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title
of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained,
but his former dignity is sadly abridged.  At present he ranks simply
as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain's
more inferior subalterns.  Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct
of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends,
and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important
officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches
on a whaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also his;
therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands,
that he should nominally live apart from the men before the mast,
and be in some way distinguished as their professional superior;
though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their social equal.

Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man
at sea, is this--the first lives aft, the last forward.
Hence, in whale-ships and merchantmen alike, the mates have their
quarters with the captain; and so, too, in most of the American
whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part of the ship.
That is to say, they take their meals in the captain's cabin,
and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it.

Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage
(by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man),
the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest
prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for
their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck,
together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work;
though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less
rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind
how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may,
in some primitive instances, live together; for all that,
the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck
are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away.
Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see
the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur
not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost
as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple,
and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.

And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod
was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption;
and though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit,
instantaneous obedience; though he required no man to remove
the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck;
and though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances
connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed