The hardwood planks on which I awakened rocked as if cradled by a matronly hand. After a moment of inspection, I realized that I was positioned on a weathered quarterdeck of an archaic sailing vessel. A spillage of morning sunlight illuminated the ebony-hulled ship, along with its three masts. Based on the temperate winds blowing from southeastern skies, I guessed the claw-shaped frigate’s route had taken a course through a mild expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Once gathering my sensibilities, I devoted more attention to the deck’s ominous décor. It all appeared sinister by design. My eyes were rudely greeted by the remnants of whalebone and teeth mantled to almost every board and rail along the interior bulwark. These pendants of Cetacean slaughter ranged from years to month in their arrangements, evidenced most tellingly by the discoloration of a lower jawbone near the tiller.
Although I never before fathomed that I was prepared to endure such a harrowing adventure at sea, I couldn’t mistake my current predicament as anything less arduous. Suddenly, I became an unlikely stowaway alongside the ill-fated sailors aboard The Pequod. I wondered if anyone other than the monomaniacal captain of this expedition yet realized the fateful end of this tale. Soon, I suspected, the wool-colored leviathan would not be deterred from a confrontation with its natural enemy.
At this juncture into the exploration, the emerald tides lapped at the boat methodically, belying the terror that would’ve soon engulfed these 19th century mariners. I often heard yarns of the ocean’s tepidness just before it unleashed a furious assault onto all those who dared to trespass upon it. Of course, I already presumed that there was only one individual on this craft who served as an augury to my journey. I didn’t suspect that the Nantucket whaler’s tyrannical commander would’ve extended a moment of his innermost burden to me, but his descent into retribution seemed essential for me to ponder. Because of the early hour and the rigors of this excursion, most of the crew hadn’t yet ventured from their sleeping quarters below deck. This provided me with the freedom to search the ship for the elusive Captain Ahab, who occasionally loomed from his cabin as almost a spectral presence among the living.
Soon after stepping along the wrinkled boards beneath my feet, I witnessed a few brawny men going about their chores with the regimentation of an experienced team. If they noticed my position, none of them bothered to acknowledge it. When I was almost ready to abandon my search, I recognized one of the captain’s personal harpooners leaning over the port rail. He seemed preoccupied with his gaze on the gilded waves as they burst in milky pitches against the ship’s battered hull. This man’s sable clothing glistened in the sunlight like wet onyx. Like my own attire, he was dressed unusually compared to the other shipmates.
When he pivoted unexpectedly away from the banister that kept him from plunging headlong into the frothy sea, I captured a glimpse of his swart face. One gleaming white tooth protruded from his upper lip, and his skin looked glazed by the binnacle’s light. Other than his Middle Eastern features, I identified this man by the way his blanch hair was knotted in the form of a turban atop his head. Ahab hired this seer for his own security, but it was obvious that he didn’t blend within the ranks of these salty seadogs. I suspected the Parsee, also known as Fedallah, hadn’t fretted over this disconnection. His sole function seemed reserved for keeping vigilance over Ahab.
Just beyond the main mast, where the try-works erected between the foremast and mainmast, I witnessed another man examining the ship’s leeway not far from where Fedallah studied the ocean’s sun-dappled waves. After monitoring this imposing figure from the twenty feet that still divided us on the deck, I knew I had located Ahab. Who else but this embittered captain limped with such an unbalanced gait across the dented planks? Ahab’s ivory leg—fashioned from a sperm whale’s jaw—had already been replaced by a less appealing appendage carved from a carpenter’s saw. From this observation I gathered that I had involuntarily joined their ranks on the morning before the first of three encounters with Ahab’s colossal adversary, better known to those of seafaring lore as Moby Dick. If ever there was immeasurable hatred projected onto one living creature to another, the delusional commander couldn’t be bested.
As I recalled, Ahab stood like a bronze guardian as he patrolled a quarterdeck perfumed by ambergris. I imagined him no less formidable in his quest than Talos protecting Europa from a band of marauding pirates. Yet I also surveyed agony discharging from a sea-scorched face. Much of his regality was stripped away by the corrosiveness often hinged to vengeance. Nearly forty years of navigation atop the merciless pitch of this world’s oceans had chopped at his skin like a Pequot tribesman’s tomahawk. What remained was a wizened and gnarly visage, framed in corkscrews of mottled locks. Even while postured in direct sunlight, a silvery glint hung over his brow as if he sported a knight’s visor. Beyond this, I discerned one prominent feature that no one dared to interrogate him with aloud. A keloid bulged from his jaw line and marred his skin like a pale bolt of lightning down the side of his neck.
While looking at him, I sensed an almost surreal trepidation swelling within me like a tidal wave. Perhaps I already knew too much about this man to suppress my fear when in his company. Although I inherently despised the captain, I still espied a piece of myself etched in the hollowness of his eyes. Of course, I realized that Ahab’s notorious foe was not the beast he hunted more than it was his own hubris. By the time I anchored the nerve to approach Ahab by the ship’s rail, his eyes had cast toward the billowy tides. Even with his concentration cemented on the water, he must’ve distinguished my footsteps creaking on the weathered deck.
I now stood fewer than ten feet away from the disgruntled captain. At closer range, I realized that Ahab’s external scars served as a veneer to the torment inhabited beneath his flesh. He wore no captain’s cap because that headpiece became the keepsake of a black hawk’s talons. Fedallah, who stood curiously aloof nearby, continued to watch the churning waters with an odd contentment, almost resembling an ever-present shadow. This harpooner’s peculiar nature permitted me to approach the rail beside Ahab uncontested. For a few seconds, I observed the ocean as it lapped like a spangled blanket at the vessel’s hull. If I wasn’t mindful, I might’ve slipped into the same reverie as the man I pursued. The ocean’s gentle symphony often lulled sailors into a sense of fallacious security.
Once the silence lingered for too long between us, Ahab jutted his chin toward the horizon. A scattering of skeleton-white heron framed an azure sky. He surveyed these birds as they danced between ribbons of light, causing their plumage to ignite like that of the Phoenix. Although I deemed it as a rare occurrence, and perhaps even a mirage, I thought I perceived a half-smile alter the captain’s bloodless lips. Maybe he found my modest stature amusing, and certainly not conditioned for the business of hunting a sperm whale. Before risking the loss of his attention completely, I elected to address him.
“Captain Ahab, I believe you’re the man I’ve come to see.” If this grizzled-hair captain displayed any hint of mirth in my direction, it disappeared like a breadcrumb swallowed by rising surf. He refused to lean in my direction and kept his raw-knuckled fingers latched around the ship’s bulwark like knotted ropes. At last, just before I thought his vexation had consumed his conscience yet again, he acknowledged my visitation.
“Avast,” he grumbled in a voice that sounded far older than his fifty-eight years of life. “Blabbering mates hast oft come to see me, sir, but unless there’s some account on the whereabouts of the infernal parmacetty, I doubt ye shalt keep my attention rapt.”
It would’ve been a simple and unkind lie for me to inform Ahab that I had acquired some secret skill at tracking the nemesis that devoured his leg. But in truth, not even those who most devoutly perused the White Whale’s history fully understood its motivations. I only wished to tap into the diseased mind of the man who hunted it so tenaciously. The captain’s attention gradually drifted back toward the saltwater as if tugged by a scrap of iron to a loadstone. It then occurred to me that Ahab was a prisoner t
o this watery tomb; perhaps he had already conceptualized his inevitable sepulcher beneath the briny waves. While preoccupied in what I presumed to be a meditative trance, Ahab spoke again.
“Ye didn’t board my ship in the port of Nantucket,” he mused, proving that if he revealed any signs of obliviousness, it was merely a ruse.
“You’re correct, sir,” I confessed.
“Aye. Let it never be uttered that I hast lost sight of my own crew. By Jove, I’d spot a foreign fleck of white upon the water two miles out just as readily.”
“I’m not here to challenge your wit. The others who sail at your command have reminded me of that.”
“Others? I pray thee, whom doth spout a syllable of praise in my direction?”
“Ishmael,” I replied, hoping to pacify his curiosity.
“Ye call him Ishmael if thou wish,” the captain said, “but I suppose there’s too many sea hands for me to mark every name to memory, but faces I shalt not soon forget.” Ahab angled his head slightly to glance at Fedallah on one side of the deck before he spoke again. “Thou must’ve jumped aboard my ship during a gam. Shouldst I be so bold to guess which one?” My peace was the only permission he required to proceed. “Thou couldst hail from the Jeroboam.”
“That’s a logical guess, Captain, but it was during the gam with the Rachel.”
“Aye, and what is thou name, sailor?”
“Cobbs.”
Ahab straightened his posture as much as his crooked body cooperated. He then pivoted away from the rail completely and forwarded a telling scowl. Even minus the foresight of another seaman’s travelogue, he perceived my infirmities. I certainly didn’t look like a man who had the discipline necessary to extract blubber and spermaceti from whales, let alone combat Ahab’s ignoble tormentor on the open sea.
“Thou art greener than the Indian Ocean,” he said. “Don’t tell me the Fates hast delivered ye to my ship for thy preliminary expedition.”
“I’m not a whaler,” I told him plainly. “I’ve never killed anything for either profit or sport.”
“On this ship, Mr. Cobbs,” said the captain, gritting his teeth, “ye fortune will change. When sunlight falls upon the waves, thou shalt turn ivory to crimson.”
“With respect, sir, I don’t wish to harm the White Whale.” To reveal such words to Ahab was tantamount to mutiny, but I wasn’t bound by the limitations of the Pequod’s planks. In fact, I knew that I’d intentionally agitate Ahab’s sensibilities with my confession. Surprisingly, he remained reposed for a man with such an odious reputation. I attributed this interlude of composure to the sea’s cadence, which sometimes cast a languid spell upon all those who distinguished its harmony in clement climes.
Yet even while incubated in these seconds of tranquil reflection, I knew about a wild tempest that roiled beneath the captain’s tattered countenance. As it was with the currents on which we sailed upon, all of perils to come hadn’t yet emerged. The icy chips at the center of Ahab’s eyes reminded me of the tips of icebergs; the bulk of these frigid masses remained blanketed beneath the surface. I wasn’t naïve to the point of confusing his muteness with any display of compassion. Although I didn’t view him as wholly diabolical, rancor had devoured this man’s core as stealthily as a pernicious cancer. Now, with eyes as cutting and slick as a mincer’s blade, Ahab diced deeper into my conscience. Perhaps he detected a semblance of my own bid for retribution.
“Ye may not have the instinct to kill for another man’s cause,” Ahab surmised, “but a hankering in thy eyes hints to an affliction similar to my own.”
Had this depraved captain truly uncovered my darkest inclinations? I was terrified by the prospect of punishing those who wronged me, but I couldn’t discount the possibility entirely. Until now, few individuals had managed to probe the murkiness of my eyes; this was where I always concealed my forbidden identity.
“I’m not so different from you after all,” I uttered to the captain. “My own quest for revenge has led me to this expedition. And just as you, I feel myself being tugged beneath the miry currents.”
“’Tis what I expected, Mr. Cobbs. But since ye hath come to seek my company, thou might yet be able to crack the links that anchor ye to such a fatal dissolution.”
“How could you hope to solve my problem, Captain Ahab, when you suffer from the same strife?”
“Aye, but who better to look into another man’s soul than one who gazes with a similar eye? Since madness stirs thy movement like a typhoon once whirled my ship, I shalt impart what I know of thee.”
Before this encounter I had always assessed Ahab as a maniacal creation whose own hubris became the true consequence of his sorrow. But suddenly, while positioned on the oily deck beside this maligned character, I sensed an indistinct vulnerability. Whether I wanted to heed to this beleaguered captain’s advice or not didn’t dissuade me from absorbing his words.
“Thou hast a wife at home,” he declared, “and just as mine waits for my passage home, ye own yearns for thy sight again.”
“It is true that I have a wife,” I replied, “but it’s unlikely that she cares for my safety.”
“Now we submerge deeper through the gloomy fathoms,” said Ahab.
Even if I sought to screen the details of my past from the captain, it would’ve been a futile ambition. I then decided to verbalize what Ahab already dissected as adeptly as one of his crewmen slicing Bible leaves from of a whale’s carcass. “The woman I love has betrayed me,” I lamented. “There are many paths I could’ve taken on my journey, but it seems I am now on the same course as you.”
Ahab cast his steely eyes away from me momentarily, eventually settling his gaze on the horizon. Out here on the sea, nothing but the heaving folds of water was visible. The grooves in his cheeks opened like the gulls of dying fish as he squinted into the morning’s sunlight. Every drop of water appeared peppered with gilded pellets. If what lurked within this ocean was clearly an enemy to Ahab, I couldn’t presently identify its whereabouts.
“Mark this as an infallibility, Mr. Cobbs,” he informed me. “The men of my vessel have chosen the sea as a means to survive on land. But my situation bends another way. I wouldst sooner hack off my good leg before trading what menace awaits me. I envy men like you who still hast freedom. Cobbs, let not ye end be as inescapable as mine. Go to thy wife without a harpoon in hand. If there is yet a thread of decency to mend the sail and save the mast, ye shalt not hesitate to do so.”
“But I do, sir. Just as you refuse to listen to Starbuck, who has begged you to turn your back on the White Whale, I can’t pretend that I’m any nobler than you.”
“As I already informed thee, who better than a fool to recognize a jester in his midst? Art thou prepared to permit my Moby Dick to become thy own?”
“Maybe I am already too far immersed in my own hatred.”
“All men must meet their doom, but the majority need not be burdened by the route in which the will advance to it. I live and shalt die with but one regret, Mr. Cobbs, and that is the chance that my pulse might endure one beat longer than my infernal foe’s bloodless heart. Find the cure to what sickens ye or thou shalt be remembered as I.”
For a few seconds I stood beside the defiant captain. Despite my attempts to draw his vision back to me, he would not answer my queries again. I, too, stood reposed in silent anticipation, while watching the waves lap against the Pequod’s blackened hull. The white birds were now absent from the sky. I then considered the immensity of the ocean, and how thoroughly it towed the particles of men into obscurity. The untamed sea had no conscience, and no reason to forgive our transgressions. And as Ishmael had astutely recorded from atop Queequeg’s coffin, it buried the memories of yesterday and tomorrow without prejudice. I now had to resume my journey into the regions of reality where not even the deepest oceans could’ve consumed the anguish churning within me.
Chapter 67
5:01 P.M.
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 67
