Zomby Dick, or the Undead Whale

by Jd Livingstone

  The large curving blade of the Danish broad axe appears in the lower left panel of Ghiberti’s Portal Paradiso, wherein David slays Goliath. That very style of axe was trusted by no less a warrior than King Richard the Lionheart; and 300 years after the Lionheart’s reign, its broad blade was arcing down in the War of the Roses. At that war’s conclusion, its blade cleaved the traitorous head from the body of no less a noble than the Duke of Somerset. Aye, the Danish axe and traitors’ necks have long been on intimate terms. And as there is no greater traitor to all humanity than the zomby,[1] this broad axe of Danish make is the perfect weapon.

  [1]Before the zomby menace, the Census Bureau in 1840 reported the Union to contain humans numbering 17 millions, and 3 millions more held as unwilling chattel, totalling 20 millions. The seventh census, completed in 1850, found that number to be 15 millions (by dint of their unflinching battle gainst the zomby host did all slaves win well-deserved freedom). Thus, by figuring also those who emigrated despite the zomby threat (some three millions), then by all accounting, we have so far lost 8 million souls to the zombies!

  Some among the learnéd have calculated that, had this been a more populous and therefore more densely settled land, the zombies would have been nigh-unstoppable and overrun the entire country in short order.

  You may keep your pistol and ball, you may keep your blunderbuss and musket, for though those may be powerful weapons, yet they are awkward, work little or not at all in the damp, and require no small amount of time to load and maintain. Keep them, I say, and I shall cleave to my axe, for it works well in rain or shine—indeed, even under water—and requires neither powder nor ball, nor time to reload; time that, in the heat of battle, cannot be bought for all the gold in all the deep-dug coffers of kings.

  The Dane axe, when fastened to a stout haft of ash or hickory is wielded as a two-handed weapon, for its head is heavy, though not, perhaps, as heavy as the heart of him who wields it; and just as with a heavy heart, the Dane axe requires some strength to lift and bring to bear. Its weighty nature does not brook the use of a shield, a useless tool against a slavering brute at any rate. Your Dane axe is a tool for quick despatch, and with it one may instantly overwhelm even the stoutest, freshest zomby who may have been a strapping youth before Quickening.

  But take care, friend, take care. For though I come off cavalier, this axe requires no small skill to wield. The neophyte, even were he able to swing the axe properly, will seek to use the blade—that sharp silvered crescent—and upon the first swing to a zomby skull, the blade is like to stick in bone and he will at once be overcome and his flesh consumed. Nay, I bid you save the blade and use the bashing side; strive not to decapitate, for it takes uncommon strength and skill to sever a head from its body, and more so when that body desperately grapples for your own.

  The head of Big Blackie is heavier than tradition requires of the Dane axe, for its butt or poll—that part of the axe-head lying directly opposite the blade—I say, the poll is not a thin and elegant thing, nor does it sport another blade or spear as some Danish war axes do. Nay, the poll of Ol’ Blackie is stout and heavy, as the poll of a felling axe, but with its edges grounded roundish, the easier to pull the poll from a stove-in zomby skull. This design came to me in the depths of a laudanum dream, much as Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome came to Coleridge in his own opiate stupor.

  The haft of Big Blackie is an even five feet of clear-grained white ash from an ancient tree, old when none but native blood lived in this land, a tree with rings so tightly packed it takes a scrying glass to see the grain. And in one of many connections between the Militia and the fishery,—that is to say, whaling—it is white ash that is used for whaleboat oars; its strength and flexibility are unparalleled.

  “But hold there, Ishmael,” your axe-master might now be saying. “Such length in an axe haft is a hindrance; it is much too lengthy.” And Ishmael replies that this is true if you would hew a log for your cabin, but in the contest against a raving shamble-man it is distance you want, and distance you need, for would you come within the grasp of those upraised hands, your flesh will be forfeit, and you will wish you had a longer haft, I assure you. I am not a small man, nor unaccustomed to swinging an axe for days on end, and so this long-hafted axe is a perfect match to me for all my height and brawn. Does not a smaller man of necessity wield a shorter shaft?

  But enough, Ishmael, thou blatherer, enough; thy breakfast needs settling. I unbuttoned the clasp about the head of Little Blackie, checked the clever catch that allows me to snatch Big Blackie quickly from my back, and all is as it should be. The streets of New Bedford lay waiting.

  Chapter

  The Street

  If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.

  In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare and yet there is a greater danger, for such diversity and strangeness also makes the spotting of zombies a greater challenge to those less cosmopolitan, and a source of tragedy.

  But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery, or like me awash in grief and seeking safe passage elsewhere. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests and zombies alike, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. I say, to them “Look to your axe, my hearties and drop it not so quick, as you may yet have need of it before shipping. Aye, and mayhap after, too.” Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver top-hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou’-wester and a bombazine cloak. Unblooded all, I wager.

  But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still, New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like, garrisoned houses; nor walled parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came these fortifications round such wondrous houses? how were planted gardens upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?

  Go and gaze upon those emblematical yet functional harpoons festooning the high stone walls round yonder lofty mansion and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens behind their stout walls came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?

  In New Bedfo
rd, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.

  In summer times past, prior to the presence of zombies, the town was sweet to see; full of fine maples—long avenues of green and gold and not a high harpoon-bedecked wall to be seen. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation’s final day.

  But now it is not summer, and there are high foreboding walls aplenty, and the trees are bare and the wind biting and the looks of the men on the street—and aye, the women too—are both wary and weary, with a hunted and a haunted appearance about them. Mayhap these good people have cleaved or burned a zomby corpse this very week, or even set a blunderbuss against their shoulder and with a flash in the pan and a jolt to the shoulder, blasted a zomby head from its diseased shoulders, and in all likelihood, that zomby was once one they knew, and likely even loved. Such an act changes one, for though the zomby is no longer human, yet it wears a human form, and though its blood is black instead of healthy red, to take even the semblance of life from a creature once loved, now loathed...ah! it is a burdensome thing for all its necessity; and that burden tends to show about the eyes a bit.

  Chapter

  A Bosom Friend

  On my slow ambulation back from perusing New Bedford’s streets, I came upon Queequeg standing in front of one of the aforementioned overstocked coffin warehouses; he having also left the Spouter for a post-breakfast constitutional. Queequeg had a wonderingly pensive look on his tattooed face, but brightened upon sighting me. We nodded friendly greeting, and he made me know that he desired more information regarding these “canoes,” as he called them. I explained as best I could that before the zomby plague and the need to incinerate bodies, whalemen who died in New Bedford were laid to rest in coffins. He seemed to understand well enough, for he nodded, looking well-pleased and, turning, gazed again at the coffins for some time in silence. I felt a cold shiver run through me and motioned him to walk on with me, for Heaven’s sake. With a bemused glance at my consternation, he nodded and fell in beside me and we strolled on towards the Spouter Inn.

  Ensconced back at the inn, we sat on a bench before the fire, our feet on the stove hearth. In Queequeg’s hand was that little idol of his; Queequeg held it close and peered hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, hummed to himself.

  He presently put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited; many a writer has shared the selfsame sentiment as Queequeg then felt.

  With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils, undead or otherwise. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor, nor would have one. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

  Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom.

  I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were on the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself.

  As I sat there in that now lonely room, heart still sore heavy and no distractions from its ponderous weight; the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells and my own inner storm yet brewing; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. A little less were my splintered heart and maddened hand turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.

  We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon he proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging fragrant puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us.

  If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if ne
ed should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this not-so-simple savage those old rules would not apply.

  After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers’ pockets. I let them stay. He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise.

  I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. It was a small thing; I had done much worse before, many times over, in fact. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salaamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.