But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips.
“Cook, Cook!—where’s that old Fleece?” he cried at length, widening his legs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; “Cook, you Cook!—sail this way, Cook!”
The old man, not in any very high glee at having been previously roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shuffling along from his galley, for, like many old men, there was something the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him on account of his hair, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old shipboard chef floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command, came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb’s sideboard; when, with both hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play.
“Cook,” said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth, “don’t you think this steak is rather overdone? You’ve been beating this steak too much, Cook; it’s too tender. Don’t I always say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now over the side, don’t you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they’re kicking up! Cook, go and talk to ‘em; tell ‘em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, Cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this lantern,” snatching one from his sideboard; “now then, go and preach to ‘em!”
Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck to the bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over the sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.
“Fellow-critters: I’se ordered here to say that you must stop that dam noise dere. You hear? Stop that dam smackin’ of da lip! Stubb say you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you must stop that dam racket!”
“Cook,” here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap on the shoulder, startling the old man badly, as he nearly pitched into the fray below—“Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn’t swear that way when you’re preaching. That’s no way to convert sinners, Cook!”
“What? Then preach to him youself,” sullenly turning to go.
“No, Cook, I’m sorry, truly I am; pray go on, go on.”
“Well, then, B’loved fellow-critters:”—
“Right!” exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, “coax ‘em to it; try that,” and Fleece continued.
“You is all sharks, and by nature wery woracious, yet I say to you, fellow-critters, that that woraciousness—stop that dam slappin’ of de tail! How you think to hear, if’n you keep up such a dam slappin’ and bitin’ dere?”
“Cook,” cried Stubb, collaring him in a jocular way, “I won’t have that swearing. Talk to ‘em gentlemanly.”
Once more the sermon proceeded.
“Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don’t blame ye so much for; that is nature, and can’t be helped; but to govern that wicked nature, that is de point. You is sharks, sartin; but if you govern de shark in you, why then you be angel; for all angels is nothin’ more than de shark well governed. Now, look here, bred’ren, just try wonst to be civil, a helping yourselfs from that whale. Don’t be tearin’ de blubber out your neighbour’s mouth, I say. Is not one shark got as good a right as t’other to that whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to that whale; that whale b’long to somebody else. I know some o’ you gots a wery big mouf, bigger than others; but then de big moufs sometimes has de small bellies; so that de bigness of de mouf is not to swaller with, but to bite off de blubber for de small fry of sharks, what can’t get up courage to help themselves.”
“Well done, old Fleece!” cried Stubb, “that’s Christianity; go on.”
“No use goin’ on; de dam villains will keep a scougin’ and slappin’ each other; dey don’t hear one word; no use a-preaching to such dam gluttons till they bellies is full, and they bellies is bottomless; and when they do get ‘em full, they won’t hear you then; for then they sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and can’t hear nothing’ at all, no more, for ever and ever.”
“Upon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction, Fleece, and I’ll away to my supper.”
Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his shrill voice, and cried—
“Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam bellies ‘till they bust—and then die.”
“Now, Cook,” said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; “stand just where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular attention.”
“All ‘tention,” said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the desired position.
“Well,” said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; “I shall now go back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you, Cook?”
“What that to do with de steak,” said the old man, testily.
“Silence! How old are you, Cook?”
“’Bout ninety, they say,” he gloomily muttered.
“And you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, Cook, and don’t know yet how to cook a whale-steak?” rapidly bolting another mouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a continuation of the question. “Where were you born, Cook?”
“’Hind de hatchway, in a ferry-boat, goin’ over de Roanoke.”
“Born in a ferry-boat! That’s queer, too. But I want to know what country you were born in, Cook!”
“Didn’t I say de Roanoke country?” he cried sharply.
“No, you didn’t, Cook; but I’ll tell you what I’m coming to, Cook. You must go home and be born over again; you don’t know how to cook a whale-steak yet.”
“Bless my soul if I cook another one,” he growled, angrily, turning round to depart.
“Come back here, Cook;—here, hand me those tongs;—now take that bit of steak there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be? Take it, I say”—holding the tongs towards him—“take it, and taste it.”
Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old man muttered, “Best cooked ‘teak I ever done tasted; joosy, verry joosy.”
“Cook,” said Stubb, squaring himself once more; “do you belong to the church?”
“Passed one once in Cape-Town,” said the old man disdainfully.
“And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town, where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, Cook! And yet you come here, and tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?” said Stubb. “Where do you expect to go to, Cook?”
“Go to bed verrry soon,” he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.
“Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, Cook. It’s an awful question. Now what’s your answer?”
“When this old black man dies,” said the man slowly, changing his whole air and demeanor, “he hisself won’t go nowhere; but some blessed angel will come and fetch him.”
“Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah? And fetch him where?”
“Up there,” said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and keeping it there very solemnly.
“So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, Cook, when you are dead? But don’t you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets? Main-top, eh?”
“Didn’t say that t’all,” said Fleece, again in the sulks.
“You said up there, didn’t you? and now look yourself, and see where your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling through the lubber’s hole,[1] Cook; but, no, no, Cook, you don’t get there except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It’s a ticklish business, but must be done, or else it’s no go. But none of us are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, Cook, and hear my orders. Do ye hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t’other a’top your heart, when I’m giving my orders, Cook. What! that your heart, there?—that’s your gizzard! Aloft! aloft!—that’s it—now you have it. Hold it there now, and pay attention.”
[1]A hole in a platform on a mast, allowing the faint of heart to ascend without venturing out on the treacherous shrouds.
“All ‘tention,” said the old man, with both hands placed as desired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at one and the same time.
“Well then, Cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad, that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that, don’t you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for my private table here, the capstan, I’ll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand and show a live coal to it with the other; that done, dish it; d’ye hear? And now to-morrow, Cook, when we are cutting-in the fish, be sure you stand by to get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, Cook. There, now ye may go.”
But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.
“Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch. D’ye hear? away you sail, then.—Halloa! Avast heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfast—don’t forget.”
“Wish whale’d eat him ‘stead of him eatin’ whale, by gor! I’m blessed if he ain’t more of a shark than Mister Shark hisself,” muttered the old man, limping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.
Chapter
Eating
Whale Brains
That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train oil. Aglakti, one of their most famous shamans, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly juicy and nourishing.
The spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into some other substance, and then partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made.
But aside from Stubb and the Captain, it is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, you dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but steel pens.
In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves’ head, which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves’ brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf’s head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf’s head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an “Et tu Brute!” expression.
Upon cracking open, at last, this whale’s brain case, a thing occurred that seemed passing strange at the time. Amid much grumbling recrimination from the forecastle, Ahab did requisition these and subsequently all whale brains taken upon this voyage and, with Fedallah, he greedily took them in a raw state to the cabin below.[1] Here, I do believe, was the moment the seed planted by Archy months ago began to take root in Bulkington’s brain.
[1]There is no small controversy in circles of the learnéd as to the predilection of the zomby for brains. To be certain, it will devour all it can of any living flesh, but I know zombies to have a particular fondness for brains, and have come upon many a zomby gnawing away at a stubborn skull, but because of the mechanics of its jaw and the not inconsiderable thickness of the human skull—some more thick than others, it should be noted—and the brainbox being designed to be not gotten into in any wise, other than through the senses and mayhap reason; I say, because of the skullbone’s impregnability, the zomby does not often succeed in what some think to be its goal, that is, to eat brains; and so it does often content itself with eating faces, for the face is the flesh closest to that pinkly convoluted thinking organ it finds so enticing.
But in spite of this evidence, it is known among those who have rigorously experimented with such grisly things, that, given opportunity and choice, your zomby will be drawn more quickly, more violently and will strive against each other most frighteningly when brains are made available. I cannot not speak to exactly why this may be, and certainly will not speak as to how nor where such experiments are undertaken, but suffice to say that there are many in the world who know much and say little; and there, thou Platonists, is a knotty riddle to ponder by flickering light on thy cave wall.
Chapter
Zombology[1]
[1]Of late, perhaps due to some confusion with its Haitian cousin, many now use the alternate spelling: zombie. On this dry subject here be it said that, as a lover of lexicons and as an accomplished, prize-winning amateur etymologist, I hold to the correctness of the more ancient spelling, and use the “-ie” suffix only when pluralizing the creature; and under such circumstances—that is to say, pluralized—are zombies most dre
adfully dangerous. Especially for the zomby is it true that many hands make for short work.
So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the habits of zombies, the ensuing chapter, in all its parts, is as important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main points of this affair.
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; already are we lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the festering barnacled hull of that vilest undying leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special zombological revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow.
Ye tender of heart or delicate of constitution, read on at your own peril and, if you boldly choose to go, insure your smelling salts are close to hand, for I shall ere long paint for you something like the true form of the zomby as it actually appears to the eye of the Militia warrior—who knows it best—when in its own absolute body the zomby is annihilated so that it can be fairly stepped upon, dismembered, disemboweled, and disembrained to be examined there where it lies. No less important is additional knowledge gleaned from the logbooks of Ahab wherein he expounded at great length upon two additional genera of the zomby unfamiliar even to the Militia. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day confidently challenge the faith of the less informed. It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving that some such pictures of the zomby are mistaken.
Zomby Dick or, The Undead Whale Page 25
