.. < chapter xcvii 9  THE LAMP >


     Had you descended from the Pequod's

try-works to the Pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping,


     for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in

some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors.  There they lay in

their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of

lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.  In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is

more scarce than the milk of queens.  To dress in the dark, and eat in the

dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot.  But the


     whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light.  He makes his

berth an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest

night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.  See with what

entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps --often but old bottles

and vials, though --to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes

them there, as mugs of ale at a vat.  He burns, too, the purest of oil, in

its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to

solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore.  It is sweet as early grass

butter in April.  He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its

freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his

own supper of game.

.. <p 424 >

