Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER 35

  The Mast-Head

  It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotationwith the other seamen my first mast-head came round.

  In most American whalemen the mast-heads are mannedalmost simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port;even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more,to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And if,after a three, four, or five years' voyage she is drawing nighhome with anything empty in her--say, an empty vial even--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last! and not tillher skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does shealtogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

  Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a veryancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here.I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were theold Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless,by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head inall Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it)as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone bythe board, in the dread gale of God's wrath; therefore, we cannotgive these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And thatthe Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is anassertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists,that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes:a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stairlike formationof all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious longupliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mountto the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of amodern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight.In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times,who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the wholelatter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food fromthe ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instanceof a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven fromhis place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantlyfacing everything out to the last, literally died at his post.Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set;mere stone, iron, and bronze men; who, though well capable of facingout a stiff gale, are still entirely incompetent to the businessof singing out upon discovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon;who, upon the top of the column of Vendome stands with arms folded,some one hundred and fifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rulesthe decks below, whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louisthe Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his toweringmain-mast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his columnmarks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go.Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands hismast-head in Trafalgar Square; and even when most obscured by thatLondon smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is there;for where there is smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington,nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below,however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracteddecks upon which they gaze; however it may be surmised,that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future,and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned.

  It may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head standersof the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so,is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole historianof Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us, that inthe early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly launched inpursuit of the game, the people of that island erected lofty spars alongthe seacoast, to which the look-outs ascended by means of nailed cleats,something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few years ago this sameplan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon descryingthe game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the beach.But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one propermast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are keptmanned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns(as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours.In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasantthe mast-head: nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful.There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding alongthe deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath youand between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea,even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus atold Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea,with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls;the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor.For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulnessinvests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startlingaccounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements;you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks;are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner--for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks,and your bill of fare is immutable.

  In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years'voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours youspend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months.And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devoteso considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life,should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to acosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localnessof feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse,a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those smalland snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves.Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t'gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks(almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t' gallant crosstrees.Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels aboutas cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure,in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you,in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickestwatch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body;for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle,and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of it,without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrimcrossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so muchof a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you.You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body,and no more can you make a convenience closet of your watch-coat.

  Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-headsof a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable littletents or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the look-outsof a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weatherof the frozen seas. In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet,entitled "A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale,and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Coloniesof Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standersof mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantialaccount of the then recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier,which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft.He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honor of himself;he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from allridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our ownchildren after our own names (we fathers being the originalinventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominateafter ourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape,the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe;it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a movablesidescreen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale.Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into itthrough a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side,or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat,with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats.In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speakingtrumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences.When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in thiscrow's-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him(also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and
shot,for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrantsea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfullyshoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water,but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing.Now, it was plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe,as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of his crow's-nest;but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and thoughhe treats us to a very scientific account of his experimentsin this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept therefor the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting fromwhat is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets;an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron inthe ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to therehaving been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew;I say, that though the Captain is very discreet andscientific here, yet, for all his learned "binnacle deviations,""azimuth compass observations," and "approximate errors,"he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so muchimmersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail beingattracted occasionally towards that well replenished littlecase-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow's nest,within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatlyadmire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain;yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignorethat case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforterit must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded headhe was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nestwithin three or four perches of the pole.

  But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloftas Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantageis greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenityof those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float.For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely,resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any oneelse off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a littleway further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard,take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at lastmount to my ultimate destination.

  Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admitthat I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universerevolving in me, how could I--being left completely to myselfat such a thought-engendering altitude--how could I but lightlyhold my obligations to observe all whaleships' standing orders,"Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time."

  And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-ownersof Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any ladwith lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness;and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head.Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they canbe killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakesround the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer.Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fisheryfurnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-mindedyoung men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seekingsentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently percheshimself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship,and in moody phrase ejaculates:--

  "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."

  Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded youngphilosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient"interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelesslylost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls theywould rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain;those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect;they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve?They have left their opera-glasses at home.

  "Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads,"we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hastnot raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teethwhenever thou art up here." Perhaps they were; or perhapsthere might have been shoals of them in the far horizon;but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant,unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blendingcadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity;takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image ofthat deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature;and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him;every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form,seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts thatonly people the soul by continually flitting through it.In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came;becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer'ssprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of everyshore the round globe over.

  There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life impartedby a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea;by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But whilethis sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch;slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror.Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday,in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop throughthat transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever.Heed it well, ye Pantheists!