The Ship: Chapters 14-27

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep." Psalm 107: 23-24.

The variety of themes and motifs interwoven in this section makes the Biblical allusion to Nantucket as the door to the wonder-world a preliminary tease. Some stage business needs to be carried out (and some kinds of materials readers liked in Melville's first five novels are trotted out). Several interwoven themes work through these chapters—the continuation of Ishmael's escape from despair, the allure of the "wonder-world," the growing sense of connection with all of humanity, the thematic force attached to Bulkington, and the dignity of all work.

• The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.

Chapter 15 Chowder

• Two enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses' ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It's ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel; and here a gallows!

The sign of the two Try Pots turns out to have a happier significance than Ishmael's first thought (or what we'll learn about try pots in Chapter 96).

• "Clam or Cod?" she repeated.

• "A clam for supper? a cold clam; is that what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?" says I; "but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter time, ain't it, Mrs Hussey?"

• But being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing but the word "clam," Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared.

• "Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make out a supper for us both on one clam?"

• However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt

Peleg and Bildad are comical figures of a sort contemporary audiences loved (and Dickens had mastered). Bildad, the coldly calculating, emotionless religious zealot ("the queerest old Quaker I ever saw") and Peleg, the cursing, emotional "blusterer" with a good heart. Their presence contributes little to the plot, but does add to the gallery of New England eccentrics in these chapters--Peter Coffin, Mrs. Hussey, Bildad's sister. They are, though, also part of the same puzzle raised by the presence of Bulkington, which we'll explore in chapter 23.

The subsequent outburst by Peleg after Bildad's outrageous offer of 1/777th of the proceeds"rounds" his character and reinforces the denigration of dogmatic, unemotional piety throughout Melville's writing.

• The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg."

• "Thou Bildad!" roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the cabin. "Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn."

• "Captain Peleg," said Bildad steadily, "thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can't tell; but as thou art still an impenitent man, captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg."

• "Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and start my soul-bolts, but I'll—I'll—yes, I'll swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-colored son of a wooden gun—a straight wake with ye!"

One might note, by the way, that Peleg's generosity is pretty limited since he offers Ishmael only 1/300th of the proceeds.

At the end of chapter 16 a third theme enters--Ahab and the mystery he embodies, a mystery prefigured in Peleg's characterization of him as "a grand ungodly godlike man."

• He's a queer man, Captain Ahab—so some think—but a good one. Oh, thou'lt like him well enough; no fear, no fear. he's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales. His lance! aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't Captain Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; he's Ahab, boy; and Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!"

• "And a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?"

• "Come hither to me—hither, hither," said Peleg, with a significance in his eye that almost startled me. "Look ye, lad; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself. 'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's a lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I've sailed with him as mate years ago; I know what he is—a good man—not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man—something like me—only there's a good deal more of him.

Chapter 17 The Ramadan

The Ramadan evokes several reactions in Ishmael (the second infuriated parts of the religious press).

• Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all sehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

• When a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.

• Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.

Here's a similar thought from Chapter 10, where Ishmael is admiring the unconscious nature of Queegqueg's philosophical acceptance of his placement in an utterly alien world.

• • But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have "broken his digester."

Chapter 18 His Mark

The comedy about Queegqueg's signing intensified the problems the book aroused in the Presbyterian press.

• As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers.

• "What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg?" said I, now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.

• "I mean," he replied, "he must show his papers."

• "Yea," said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam. "He must show that he's converted. Son of darkness," he added, turning to Queequeg, "art thou at present in communion with any Christian church?"

• "Why," said I, "he's a member of the First Congregational Church." Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be converted into the churches.

• "First Congregational Church," cried Bildad, "what! that worships in Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman's meeting-house?" and so saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at Queequeg.

• "How long hath he been a member?" he then said, turning to me; "not very long, I rather guess, young man."

• "No," said Peleg, "and he hasn't been baptized right either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue off his face."

• "Do tell, now," cried Bildad, "is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's day."

• "I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeeting," said I, "all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is."

• "Young man," said Bildad sternly, "thou art skylarking with me—explain thyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me."

• Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. "I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we all join hands."

• "Splice, thou mean'st splice hands," cried Peleg, drawing nearer. "Young man, you'd better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy—why Father Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he's reckoned something. Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog there—what's that you call him? tell Quohog to step along.

Bildad's mutterings about helll and damnation as well as the tract "The Latter Day is Coming; or No time to Lose" produce a footnote in the Norton Critical Edition about the fun Melville and his sister concerning their pious sister's constant distribution of Dutch Reformed tracts in the Albany area. The sour Bildad gets Peleg's goat again.

• Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did'st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?"

• "Hear him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,—"hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands—how to rig jury-masts—how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of."

Chapter 19 The Prophet

Elijah—named for the Biblical prophet who denounced the evil king Ahab—with his half-mad history and portentous prophesies adds to the hints of doomed predestination that began with the mention of that 'invisible police officer of the Fates" in "Loomings."

Chapter 20 All Astir

The business of getting ready for the voyage—Aunt Charity's eager attention to the comfort of the crew

Chapter 22. Merry Christmas

The last bits of comedy with the cursing Peleg and the righteous Bildad are suffused with their deep attachment to the ship and to sailing. Their concern for the crew and the enterprise is equalled by the affection Peleg shows for poor Bildad as he suffers his departure from the Pequod.

Two paragraphs capture Ishmael's oscillating moods. First, his response to the Isaac Watts hymn Bildad sings while piloting the ship , evoking the lost green fields that haunt those who line the shores of Manhattan in "Loomings"

• Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard,—

• "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,

• Stand dressed in living green.

• So to the Jews old Canaan stood,

• While Jordan rolled between."

• Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.

But the mood is very different at the very end of the chapter.

• "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

An inflection-point, where we see the change in Melville's ambitions for the book—where, to use our occasional musical metaphor, the key signature changes.

The mystery of why keep Bulkington in the book when the appearance of Ahab displaced him may be in the need to introduce the Byronic theme of the doomed truth-seeker before Ahab's dramatically delayed appearance on deck (and to keep some rhetorically charged language he couldn't bring himself to omit).

In an exchange of letters with Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (by then famous for Two Years Before the Mast), Melville suggests his ambition for Moby-Dick when he thought he was half-way through, at the start of May 1850: "About the 'whaling voyage'—I am half way in the work, & am very glad that your suggestion so jumps with mine. It will be a strong sort of a book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; ... Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this." See pp. 532-533 in the Critical Edition

One can speculate, helped greatly by the essay by Harrison Hayford in the Norton Critical Edition (674-696), that at this phase the book might have involved the tension in Ishmael's voyage between the doomed, Byronic "landlessness" of the heroic Bulkington (maybe the specksnyder, or chief harpooner) and the common sense of the boisterous but good-hearted Peleg, as they met the threats and carried out the work of a whaling voyage. the comical Peleg might well have been the first mate, perhaps with Bildad as captain or as captain himself. Adventure, comedy, and Byronic yearning might have flowed together, with the end of chapter 23 recounting a climax in the book: "Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of they ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

What happened to the book? Ahab, in a word. Perhaps those large-type editions of Milton and Shakespeare Melville took with him to the Berkshires, perhaps his meeting in the summer of 1850 with Nathaniel Hawthorne and the essay about the stories from Mosses from on Old Manse Melville wrote at that time. He characterized the "great power of blackness" in Hawthorne as growing out of "that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free."

Chapter 24. The Advocate

Now we hear the voice of the narrator Ishmael, looking back on his experiences as a whaler. The history, accomplishment, and courage he invokes culminates, of course, in the famous ending of the chapter—"a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." a claim made by Ishmael, but in the voice of Melville, denied a formal education. In addition, a salvo at the assumption that only historically acceptable European models of heroism and nobility, and therefore anti-democratic norms, define greatness.

Chapter 25 Postscript

This chapter was removed from the British edition, for obvious reasons.

• It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a caster of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.

• But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

• Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!

Chapter 26. Knights and Squires

The two "Knights and Squires" chapters assert overtly in the chapter title the anti-aristocratic beliefs behind the royal Brylcreem joke in the last chapter. Much of the oratorical flourish of the passage below evokes the speeches given by Melville's ardently Jacksonian brother Gansevoort. The allusion to Hamlet's apostrophe to mankind ("What a thing is man! " [2:2:231]) reinforces the democratic aesthetic that leads to the encomium to democratic mankind that ends the chapter

• Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!

• If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God!

Chapter 27. Knights and Squires

The second Knights and Squires chapter characterizes Stubb and Flask, introduces the whale-ship as a world-community—a Clootz deputation—and, at the same time, presents the "isolato" quality that gives Ahab his power over the crew.