proclaimed himself the archangel Gabriel on the ship and mesmerized the
crew. Captain Mayhew wanted to get rid of him at the next port, but the
crew threatened desertion. And the sailors aboard the Pequod now see this
very Gabriel in front of them. When Captain Mayhew is telling Ahab a story
about the White Whale, Gabriel keeps interrupting. According to Mayhew, the
Jeroboam first heard about the existence of Moby Dick when they were
speaking to another ship. Gabriel then warned against killing it, calling
it the Shaker God incarnated. They ran into it about a year afterwards and
the ship's leaders decided to hunt it. As the mate was standing in the ship
to throw his lance, the whale ipped the mate into the air and tossed him
into the sea. Nothing was harmed except for the mate, who drowned. Gabriel,
the entire time, had been on the mast-head and said, basically, "I told you
so." When Ahab confirms that he intends to hunt the white whale still,
Gabriel points to him, saying, "Think, think of the blasphemer - dead, and
down there! - beware of the blasphemer's end!" Ahab then realizes that the
Pequod is carrying a letter for the dead mate and tries to hand it over to
the captain on the end of a cutting-spade pole. Somehow, Gabriel gets a
hold of it, impales it on the boat-knife, and sends it back to Ahab's feet
as the Jeroboam pulls away.
Ishmael backtracks again in The Monkey-Rope to explain how Queequeg inserts
the blubber hook. Ishmael, as Queequeg's bowsman, ties the monkey-rope
around his waist as Queequeg is on the whale's oating body trying to attach
the hook. (In a footnote, we learn that only on the Pequod were the monkey
and this holder actually tied together, an improvement introduced by
Stubb.) While Ishmael holds him, Tashtego and Daggoo are also ourishing
their whale-spades to keep the sharks away. When Dough-Boy, the steward,
offers Queequeg some tepid ginger and water, the mates frown at the in
uence of pesky Temperance activists and make the steward bring him alcohol.
Meanwhile, as the Pequod oats along, they spot a right whale. After killing
him, Stubb asks Flask what Ahab might want with this "lump of foul lard."
Flask responds that Fedallah says that a whaler with a Sperm Whale's head
on her starboard side and a Right Whale's head on her larboard will never
afterwards capsize. They then get into a discussion in which both of them
confess that they do not like Fedallah and think of him as "the devil in
disguise." In this instance and always, Fedallah watches and stands in
Ahab's shadow. Ishmael notes that the Parsee's shadow seemed to blend with
and lengthen Ahab's.
Chapters 74-81
Summary
The paired chapters (74 and 75) do an anatomic comparison of the sperm
whale's head and the right whale's head. In short, the sperm whale has a
great well of sperm, ivory teeth, long lower jaw, and one external spout-
hole; the right whale has bones shaped like Venetian blinds in his mouth,
huge lower lip, a tongue, and one external spout- hole. Ishmael calls the
right whale stoic and the sperm "platonian." The Battering-Ram discusses
the blunt, large, wall-like part of the head that seems to be just a "wad."
In actuality, inside the thin, sturdy casing is a "mass of tremendous
life." He goes on to explain, in The Great Heidelberg Tun (a wine cask in
Heidelberg with a capacity of 49,000 gallons), that there are two
subdivisions of the upper part of a whale's head: the Case and the junk.
The Case is the Great Heidelberg Tun since it contains the highly-prized
spermaceti. Ishmael then dramatizes the tapping of the case by Tashtego. It
goes by bucket from the "cistern" (well) once Tashtego finds the spot. In
this scene, Tashtego accidentally falls in to the case. In panic, Daggoo
fouls the lines and the head falls into the ocean. Queequeg dives in and
manages to save Tashtego.
In The Prairie, Ishmael discusses the nineteenth-century arts of
physiognomy (the art of judging human character from facial features)and
phrenology (the study of the shape of the skull, based on the belief that
it reveals character and mental capacity). By such analyses, the sperm
whale's large, clear brow gives him the dignity of god. The whale's
"pyramidical silence" demonstrates the sperm whale's genius. But later
Ishmael abandons this line of analysis, saying that he isn't a
professional. Besides, the whale wears a "false brow" because it really
doesn't have much in its skull besides the spermy stufi. (The brain is
about 10 inches big.) Ishmael then says that he would rather feel a man's
spine to know him than his skull, throwing out phrenology. Judging by
spines (which, like brains, are a network of nerves) would discount the
smallness of the whale's brain and admire the wonderful comparative
magnitude of his spinal cord. The hump becomes a sign of the whale's
indomitable spirit.
The Jungfrau (meaning Virgin in German) is out of oil and meets the Pequod
to beg for some. Ahab, of course, asks about the White Whale, but the
Jungfrau has no information. Almost immediately after the captain of the
Jungfrau steps off the Pequod's deck, whales are sighted and he goes after
them desperately. The Pequod also gives chase and succeeds in harpooning
the whale before the Germans. But, after bringing the carcass alongside the
ship, they discover that the whale is sinking and dragging the ship along
with it. Ishmael then discusses the frequency of sinking whales.
The Jungfrau starts chasing a fin-back, a whale that resembles a sperm
whale to the unskilled observer.
Chapter 82-92
Summary
Ishmael strays from the main action of the plot again, diving into the
heroic history of whaling. First, he draws from Greek mythology, the Judeo-
Christian Bible, and Hindu mythology. He then discusses the Jonah story in
particular (a story that has been shadowing this entire novel from the
start) through the eyes of an old Sag-Harbor whaleman who is crusty and
questions the Jonah story based on personal experience.
Ishmael then discusses pitchpoling by describing Stubb going through the
motions (throwing a long lance from a jerking boat to secure a running
whale). He then goes into a discursive explanation of how whales spout with
some attempt at scientific precision. But he cannot define exactly what the
spout is, so he has to put forward a hypothesis: the spout is nothing but
mist, like the "semi- visible steam" that proceeds from the head of
ponderous beings such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and
himself! In the next chapter, he celebrates a whale's most famous part: his
tail. He likes its potential power and lists its difierent uses.
When the Pequod sails through the straits of Sunda (near Indonesia) without
pulling into any port, Ishmael takes the opportunity to discuss how
isolated and self- contained a whaleship is. While in the straits, they run
into a great herd of sperm whales swimming in a circle (the "Grand
Armada"){ but as they are chasing the whales, they are being chased by
Malay pirates. They try to "drugg" the whales so that they can kill them on
their own time.
(There are too many to try to kill at once.) They escape the pirates and go
in boats after the whales, somehow ending up inside their circle, a placid
lake.
But one whale, who had been pricked and was oundering in pain, panics the
whole herd. The boats in the middle are in danger but manage to get out of
the center of the chaos. They try to "waif" the whales{that is, mark them
as the Pequod's to be taken later. Ishmael then goes back to explaining
whaling terms, staring with "schools" of whales. The schoolmaster is the
head of the school, or the lord. The all-male schools are like a "mob of
young collegians." Backtracking to a reference in Chapter 87 about waifs,
Ishmael explains how the waif works as a symbol in the whale fishery. He
goes on to talk about historical whaling codes and the present one that a
Fast- Fish belongs to the party fast to it and a Loose-Fish is fair came
for anybody who can soonest catch it. A fish is fast when it is physically
connected (by rope, etc.) to the party after it or it bears a waif, says
Ishmael. Lawyer- like, Ishmael cites precedents and stories, to show how
dificult it is to maintain rules. In Heads or Tails, he mentions the
strange problem with these rules in England because the King and Queen
claim the whale. Some whalemen in Dover (or some port near there, says
Ishmael) lost their whale to the Duke because he claimed the power
delegated him from the sovereign.
Returning to the narrative, Ishmael says they come up on a French ship
Bouton de Rose (Rose-Button or Rose- Bud). This ship has two whales
alongside: one "blasted whale" (one that died unmolested on the sea) that
is going to have nothing useful in it and one whale that died from
indigestion.
Stubb asks a sailor about the White Whale? Never seen him, is the answer.
Crafty Stubb then asks why the man is trying to get oil out of these whales
when clearly there is none in either whale. The sailor on the Rose-Bud says
that his captain, on his first trip, will not believe the sailor's own
statements that the whales are worthless. Stubb goes aboard to tell the
captain that the whales are worthless, although he knows that the second
whale might have ambergris, an even more precious commodity than
spermaceti. Stubb and the sailor make up a little plan in which Stubb says
ridiculous things in English and the sailor says, in French, what he
himself wants to say. The captain dumps the whales. As soon as the Rose-Bud
leaves, Stubb mines and finds the sweet- smelling ambergris.
Ishmael, in the next chapter, explains what ambergris is: though it looks
like mottled cheese and comes from the bowel of whales, ambergris is
actually used for perfumes. He uses dry legal language to describe
ambergris and discuss its history even though he acknowledges that poets
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