Moby
Dick.
Chapter
One.
Call me Ishmael.
Some years ago- never mind how long precisely-
having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to
interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery
part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating
the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever
it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily
pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I
meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it
requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into
the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it
high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and
ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly
take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it,
almost all men in their degree, some
time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings toward the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the
Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce
surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its
extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and
cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look
at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy
Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by
Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around
the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.
Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking
over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if
striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of
week days pent up in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches,
clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they
here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing
straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content
them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of
yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as
they possibly can without falling And there they stand- miles of them- leagues.
Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets avenues- north, east,
south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of
the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
Once more. Say you are in the country; in
some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it
carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There
is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest
reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you
ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your
caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one
knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint
you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic
landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs?
There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix
were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up
from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a
mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side
blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree
shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain,
unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit
the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep
among Tiger-lilies- what is the one charm wanting?- Water- there is not a drop
of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your
thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly
receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which
he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach?
Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at
some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a
passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told
that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians
hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother
of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning
of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild
image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same
image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the
ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of
going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over
conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea
as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get
sea-sick- grow quarrelsome- don't sleep of nights- do not enjoy themselves
much, as a general thing;- no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am
something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a
Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like
them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and
tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take
care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and
what not. And as for going as cook,- though I confess there is considerable
glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board- yet, somehow, I
never fancied broiling fowls;- though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and
judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more
respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is
out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and
roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge
bakehouses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple
sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the fore-castle, aloft there to
the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump
from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort
of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if
you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or
Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your
hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster,
making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I
assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of
Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears
off in time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a
sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that
indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do
you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who
ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order
me about- however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of
knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in
much the same way- either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is;
and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each
other's shoulder-blades, and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor,
because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay
passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers
themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between
paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,- what
will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is
really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the
root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven.
Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor,
because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as
in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that
is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the
Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the
sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much
the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the
same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after
having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into
my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the
Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and
influences me in some unaccountable way- he can better answer than any one
else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort
of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that
this part of the bill must have run something like this:
"Grand Contested Election for the
Presidency of the United States. "WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that
those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling
voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and
short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces- though I
cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances,
I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly
presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the
part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice
resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the
overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious
monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled
his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with
all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to
sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been
inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things
remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not
ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be
social with it- would they let me- since it is but well to be on friendly terms
with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
By reason of these things, then, the
whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung
open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there
floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of
them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.