Zomby Dick or, The Undead Whale

by Melville, Herman

  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 and constant guilt 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 pestilential snow hill in the air.

  Chapter 2

  Rucksack

  I stuffed a shirt or two, my hammock, and two heavy woolen blankets into my old rucksack, strapped it to my back, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the high-walled city of old Manhatto, axe in hand, I traveled alone, sleeping in safety, slung up high in stout oaks and burly maples. After only three mundane encounters with zombies,—all handily despatched—I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would offer till the following Monday. I prayed this would not lead to dire consequences as New Bedford is not so snug and safe as old Manhatto, for New Bedford has neither wherewithal nor inclination to build and man a great wall round the whole city. Nay, instead, fortifications here are a matter of individual investment, and so the many buildings having to do with wealthy whaling concerns are mightily fortified and apportioned with bristling brutes on their battlements; whereas those who cannot afford to lodge behind such walls have little chance of succor save by going about armed to the teeth.

  There is an alertness to be seen in those who walk the New Bedford streets, despite the common knowledge that your average zomby cannot well abide the biting cold. Alas, fear is a special fever of the brain that takes no heed of outer climes, and this febrile fear now burns bright in every human breast even as the bitter snow flies and rivers are locked by ice.

  As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. New Bedford and those hardy Quakers residing upon the island needed no fortifications, for the zomby cannot swim, nor does he easily shuffle along the bottom as some believe.

  When obtaining crewmen in such a redoubtable port, there is lesser likelihood that a zomby will accidently be shipped; some lightly bitten wight who has yet to turn feverish, die, and Quicken. Besides, though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original—the place where the first dead American whale was stranded.

  Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Wampanoag, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?

  Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless; doubly so when you see shambling threats lurking in every shadowy corner. I knew no one in the city.

  With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south and the threat from the west—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.

  With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,—rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless service, the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don’t you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

  Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. Despite the peaceful quiet, I knew better than to let my guard desert me, cold or no; I stayed alert as a deer, tossing the smooth ash handle of Blackie back and forth between my hands, the activity warming me somewhat.

  I at last came to a dim and less dangerous sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath—“The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.”

  Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connection, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, and finally the deplorable state of its outer zomby-proof door, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings and the best of pea coffee.

  It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. It makes a marvellous difference whether you look out at the wind from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether you observe it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and Death the only glazier.

  True enough, thought I. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a billion years ago. What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

  But what thinks that venerable Christian zomby, Lazarus? Can he warm his once-dead blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?[1]

  [1]As previously touched upon, zombies care not for cold; less well known is that in winter they huddle together in stinking herds like slow-writhing balls of winter snakes in their slithery dens; in such frigid climes are they easily overcome.

  But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this “Spouter” may be.

  Chapter 3

  Sober Cannibal

  Entering that gable-ended
Spouter Inn, past the shabby zomby-proof door—yet still seeming more solid than all the rest of the building—you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. Despite the decrepitude of the establishment, it did ease a burdened mind to be inside and free of the need to cast one’s weary senses hither and yon in wariness.

  On one side of the room hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist in the time of the New England hags had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you could at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.

  But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant.

  Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That, once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?

  In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many agéd persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.

  The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and marveled at what monstrous mayhem you could wreak, zomby-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifyingly wondrous implement.

  A low whistle escaped me unbidden when I saw that many were no mere museum pieces hung here for the titillation of the tenants; these were functional; a sort of communal weaponry easily snatched from the wall, sharp as the tongue of a mother recently shorn of her children, by their look. None sported fresh ichor, but of stains there were plenty. Mixed with these shining weapons were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found embedded in the hump.

  Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way, you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft’s cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death.

  Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without—within, the villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass encircle these footpads’ goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling.

  Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light diverse specimens of skrimshander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full—not a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.”

  I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange and frightfully unwalled town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man’s blanket.

  “I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper? Supper’ll be ready directly.”

  I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating sailor was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn’t make much headway, I thought.

  At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said he couldn’t afford it and muttered something about slowing down the undead with the cold, on account of you could never be too sure. Nothing lit the place but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind—not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner.

  “My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty.”

  “Landlord,” I whispered, “that ain’t the harpooneer is it?”

  “Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don’t—he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes ‘em rare.”

  “The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?”

  “He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer.

  I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did.

  Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on.

  Presently a rioting noise was heard without and instantly the room became tense, all hands grabbing weapons, but the
noise was boisterous not monstrous and just as instantly all faces round the room lost their fearful cast. Starting up, the landlord cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; only a two years’ voyage; and a full ship in record time! Hurrah, boys; now we’ll have the latest news from the Feegees.”

  A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth—the bar—where the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round.

  The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously. I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. He frequently looked my way and seemed on the verge of approaching me but would not meet my eye, an often enough occurrence for those few who know me by reputation; and of late I look a sort of tough and shaggy myself. This man interested me at once for some unknown reason; There seemed a queer sort of familiarity about him; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate and the queerness eventually explained, I will here venture upon a little description of him.