.. < chapter lxxxi 21  THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIN >


     The predestinated day

arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of

Bremen.  At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and

Germans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide intervals of

latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with their flag in the

Pacific.  For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her

respects.  While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and

dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing

in the bows instead of the stern.

.. <p 349 >


     What has he in his hand there?  cried Starbuck, pointing to something

wavingly held by the German.  Impossible! --a lamp-feeder!  Not that, said

Stubb, no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he's coming off to make

us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see that big tin can there alongside

of him? --that's his boiling water.  Oh!  he's all right, is the Yarman.  Go

along with you, cried Flask, it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.  He's out

of oil, and has come a-begging.  However curious it may seem for an oil-ship

to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly

contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes

such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer

did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare.  As he mounted the

deck, ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all heeding what he had in his

hand; but in his broken lingo, the German soon evinced his complete

ignorance of the White Whale; immediately turning the conversation to his

lamp-feeder and oil can, with some remarks touching his having to turn into

his hammock at night in profound darkness --his last drop of Bremen oil being

gone, and not a single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency;

concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is

technically called a clean one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the

name of Jungfrau or the Virgin.  His necessities supplied, Derick departed;

but he had not gained his ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously


     raised from the mast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was

Derick, that without pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he

slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.  Now, the

game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German boats that soon

followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod's keels.  There were

eight whales, an average pod.  Aware of their danger, they were going all

abreast with great speed straight before the wind, rubbing their flanks as

closely as so many spans of horses in harness.  They left a

.. <p 350 >

great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great wide parchment upon

the sea.  Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a

huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as

by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted

with the jaundice, or some other infirmity.  Whether this whale belonged to

the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such

venerable leviathans to be at all social.  Nevertheless, he stuck to their

wake, though indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the

white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell

formed when two hostile currents meet.  His spout was short, slow, and

laborious; coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in

torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which

seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters

behind him to upbubble.  Who's got some paregoric?  said Stubb, he has the

stomach-ache, I'm afraid.  Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache!


     Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys.  It's the first foul

wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so

before?  it must be, he's lost his tiller.  As an overladen Indiaman bearing

down the Hindostan coast with a deck load of frightened horses, careens,

buries, rolls, and wallows on her way; so did this old whale heave his aged

bulk, and now and then partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose

the cause of his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin.

Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were

hard to say.  Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that

wounded arm, cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.  Mind

he don't sling thee with it, cried Starbuck.  Give way, or the German will

have him.  With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this

one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most

valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were going

with such great velocity, moreover,

.. <p 351 >

as almost to defy pursuit for the time.  At this juncture, the Pequod's keel

had shot by the three German boats last lowered; but from the great start he

had had, Derick's boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by

his foreign rivals.  The only thing they feared, was, that from being already

so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron before they could

completely overtake and pass him.  as for derick, he seemed quite confident

that this would be the case, and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook

his lamp-feeder at the other boats.  The ungracious and ungrateful dog!

cried Starbuck; he mocks and dares me with the very poor-box I filled for

him not five minutes ago! --then in his old intense whisper -- give way,

greyhounds!  Dog to it!  I tell ye what it is, men --cried Stubb to his crew

-- It's against my religion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villanous

Yarman --Pull--won't ye?  Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye?  Do ye love

brandy?  A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man.  Come, why don't some of

ye burst a blood-vessel?  Who's that been dropping an anchor overboard --we

don't budge an inch --we're becalmed.  Halloo, here's grass growing in the

boat's bottom --and by the Lord, the mast there's budding.  This won't do,

boys.  Look at that Yarman!  The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit

fire or not?  Oh!  see the suds he makes!  cried Flask, dancing up and down

-- What a hump --Oh, do pile on the beef --lays like a log!  Oh!  my lads, do

spring --slap-jacks and quohogs for supper, you know, my lads --baked clams and

muffins --oh, do, do spring --he's a hundred barreler --don't lose him now

--don't oh, don't! -- see that Yarman --Oh!  won't ye pull for your duff, my

lads --such a sog!  such a sogger!  Don't ye love sperm?  There goes three

thousand dollars, men! --a bank! --a whole bank!  The bank of England! --Oh, do,


     do, do! --What's that Yarman about now?  At this moment Derick was in the act

of pitching his lamp-feeder at the advancing boats, and also his oil-can;

perhaps with the double view of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same

time economically accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the

backward toss.  The unmannerly Dutch dogger!  cried Stubb.  Pull now,

.. <p 352 >

men, like fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils.  What

d'ye say, Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty

pieces for the honor of old Gay-head?  What d'ye say?  I say, pull like

god-dam, --cried the Indian.  Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of

the German, the Pequod's three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and,

so disposed, momentarily neared him.  In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude

of the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up

proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry of,


     There she slides, now!  Hurrah for the white-ash breeze!  Down with the

Yarman!  Sail over him!  But so decided an original start had Derick had,

that spite of all their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this

race, had not a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught

the blade of his midship oarsman.  While this clumsy lubber was striving to

free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick's boat was nigh to

capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage; --that was a

good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask.  With a shout, they took a mortal

start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German's quarter.  An instant

more, and all four boats were diagonically in the whale's immediate wake,

while stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.


     It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight.  The whale was now

going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented

jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright.  Now to this

hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every

billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled

towards the sky his one beating fin.  So have I seen a bird with clipped wing,


     making affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the

piratical hawks.  But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make

known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained

up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration

through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably

.. <p 353 >

pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent

tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.  Seeing now

that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod's boats the advantage,

and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to

him must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the last chance would

for ever escape.  But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke,

than all three tigers --Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo -- instinctively sprang to

their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their

barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three

Nantucket irons entered the whale.  Blinding vapors of foam and white-fire!

The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's headlong rush, bumped the

German's aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer

were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.  Don't be

afraid, my butter-boxes, cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon them as

he shot by; ye'll be picked up presently --all right --I saw some sharks

astern --St. Bernard's dogs, you know --relieve distressed travellers.

Hurrah!  this is the way to sail now.  Every keel a sun-beam!  Hurrah! --Here

we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar!  This puts me in

mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain --makes the

wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way; and there's danger of

being pitched out too, when you strike a hill.  Hurrah!  this is the way a

fellow feels when he's going to Davy Jones --all a rush down an endless

inclined plane!  Hurrah!  this whale carries the everlasting mail!  But the

monster's run was a brief one.  Giving a sudden gasp, he tumultuously sounded.


     With a grating rush, the three lines flew round the loggerheads with such a

force as to gouge deep grooves in them; while so fearful were the

harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the lines, that using

all their dexterous might, they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope

to hold on; till at last --owing to the perpendicular strain from the

lead-lined chocks of the boats, whence the three

.. <p 354 >

ropes went straight down into the blue --the gunwales of the bows were almost

even with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the air.  And the

whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude,

fearful of expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish.

But though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this


     holding on, as it is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live

flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon

rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes.  Yet not to speak of the

peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is always the

best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken

whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted.  Because, owing to the

enormous surface of him --in a full grown sperm whale something less than


square feet --the pressure of the water is immense.  We all know what an

astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here,

above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on

his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean!  It must at least equal the

weight of fifty atmospheres.  One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of

twenty line-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on

board.  As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down

into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort,

nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what

landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the

utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony!  Not eight

inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows.  Seems it credible

that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big

weight to an eight day clock.  Suspended?  and to what?  To three bits of

board.  Is this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said -- Canst

thou fill his skin with barbed irons?  or his head with fish-spears?  The

sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the

habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee;

darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!  This

the creature?  this he?  Oh!  that unfulfilments

.. <p 355 >

should follow the prophets.  For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his

tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him

from the Pequod's fish-spears!  In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the

shadows that the three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been

long enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army.  Who can tell how

appalling to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over

his head!  Stand by, men; he stirs, cried Starbuck, as the three lines

suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by

magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every oarsman

felt them in his seat.  The next moment, relieved in a great part from the

downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a

small ice-field will, when a dense herd of white bears are scared from it

into the sea.  Haul in!  Haul in!  cried Starbuck again; he's rising.  The

lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand's breadth could have

been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all dripping into the

boats, and soon the whale broke water within two ship's lengths of the

hunters.  His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion.  In most land

animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins,

whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off

in certain directions.  Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it

is, to have an entire nonvalvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that

when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once

begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is heightened by the

extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his

life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams.  Yet so vast is the

quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains,


     that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even

as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs of

far-off and undiscernible hills.  Even now, when the boats pulled upon this

whale, and perilously drew over his swaying

.. <p 356 >

flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady

jets from the new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the

natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending

its affrighted moisture into the air.  From this last vent no blood yet came,

because no vital part of him had thus far been struck.  His life, as they

significantly call it, was untouched.  As the boats now more closely

surrounded him, the whole upper part of his form, with much of it that is

ordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed.  His eyes, or rather the places

where his eyes had been, were beheld.  As strange misgrown masses gather in

the knot-holes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which

the whale's eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly

pitiable to see.  but pity there was none.  For all his old age, and his one

arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to

light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate

the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.

Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely

discolored bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel, low down on the flank.


     A nice spot, cried Flask; just let me prick him there once.  Avast!

cried Starbuck, there's no need of that!  But humane Starbuck was too late.

At the instant of the dart an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and

goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick

blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and

their glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat and

marring the bows.  It was his death stroke.  For, by this time, so spent was

he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had

made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin,

then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white

secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died.  It was most piteous, that

last expiring spout.  As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off

from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the

spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground --so the last long dying spout

of the whale.

.. <p 357 >

Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body showed

symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled.  Immediately, by

Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so that ere

long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a few inches

beneath them by the cords.  By very heedful management, when the ship drew

nigh, the whale was transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there

by the stiffest fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially

upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom.  It so chanced that almost

upon first cutting into him with the spade, the entire length of a corroded

harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch

before described.  But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the

dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them,

and no prominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must

needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account

for the ulceration alluded to.  But still more curious was the fact of a

lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the

flesh perfectly firm about it.  Who had darted that stone lance?  And when?

It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before America was

discovered.  What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous

cabinet there is no telling.  But a sudden stop was put to further

discoveries, by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the

sea, owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink.  However,

Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the last; hung

on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship would have been

capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with the body; then, when the

command was given to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain upon

the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it

was impossible to cast them off.  Meantime everything in the Pequod was

aslant.  To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the steep

gabled roof of a house.  The ship groaned and gasped.  Many of the ivory

inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the

unnatural dislocation.  In

.. <p 358 >

vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable

fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timber-heads; and so low had the

whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached,

while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk,


     and the ship seemed on the point of going over.  Hold on, hold on, won't

ye?  cried Stubb to the body, don't be in such a devil of a hurry to sink!

By thunder, men, we must do something or go for it.  No use prying there;

avast, I say with your handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer book and a

pen-knife, and cut the big chains.  Knife?  Aye, aye, cried Queequeg, and

seizing the carpenter's heavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and

steel to iron, began slashing at the largest fluke-chains.  But a few strokes,


     full of sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest.

With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the

carcase sank.  Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed

Sperm Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately

accounted for it.  Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy,

with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface.  If the only

whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their

pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you

might with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon

specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of

buoyant matter in him.  But it is not so.  For young whales, in the highest

health, and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm

flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them; even these

brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.  Be it said, however, that the Sperm

Whale is far less liable to this accident than any other species.  Where one

of that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do.  This difference in the

species is no doubt imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of

bone in the Right Whale; his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more

than a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free.  But there

are instances where,

.. <p 359 >

after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale again rises,

more buoyant than in life.  But the reason of this is obvious.  Gases are

generated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of

animal balloon.  A line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then.  In

the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right


     Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of

rope; so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look for it

when it shall have ascended again.  It was not long after the sinking of the

body that a cry was heard from the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the

Jungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was

that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales,

because of its incredible power of swimming.  Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's

spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is

often mistaken for it.  And consequently Derick and all his host were now in

valiant chase of this unnearable brute.  The Virgin crowding all sail, made

after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward,

still in bold, hopeful chase.  Oh!  many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the

Dericks, my friend.

.. <p 359 >

