Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: “Stand up!” and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.
Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents.
“That’s his hump. _There_, _there_, give it to him!” whispered Starbuck.
A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat;it was the darted iron of Queequeg.Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from astern,while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge;the sail collapsed and exploded;a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by;something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us.The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.
Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed.Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars,and lashing them across the gunwale,tumbled back to our places.There we sat up to our knees in the sea,the water covering every rib and plank,so that to our downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean.
The wind increased to a howl;the waves dashed their bucklers together;the whole squall roared, forked,and crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie,in which, unconsumed, we were burning;immortal in these jaws of death!In vain we hailed the other boats;as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold,despairing of ship or boat,we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on.The mist still spread over the sea,the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat.Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet,hollowing his hand to his ear.We all heard a faint creaking,as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by the storm.The sound came nearer and nearer;the thick mists were dimly parted by a huge,vague form. Affrighted,we all sprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view,bearing right down upon us within a distance of not much more than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat,as for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship’s bows like a chip at the base of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our perishing,—an oar or a lance pole.
CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.
“Queequeg,” said I, when they had dragged me,the last man, to the deck,and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water;“Queequeg, my fine friend,does this sort of thing often happen?” Without much emotion,though soaked through just like me,he gave me to understand that such things did often happen.
“Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who,buttoned up in his oil-jacket,was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr.Stubb, I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met,our chief mate, Mr. Starbuck,is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then,that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman’s discretion?”
“Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn. ”
“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post,who was standing close by;“you are experienced in these things, and I am not.Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery,Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s jaws?”
“Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law.I should like to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face foremost. Ha, ha!the whale would give them squint for squint, mind that!”