CHAPTER 47
The Mat-Maker
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily loungingabout the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored waters.Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yetsomehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of revelrylurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into hisown invisible self.
I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat.As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marlinebetween the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle,and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavyoaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off uponthe water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn;I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all overthe ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermittingdull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this werethe Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanicallyweaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixedthreads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning,unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admitof the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own.This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my ownhand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny intothese unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive,indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly,or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;and by this difference in the concluding blow producing acorresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric;this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashionsboth warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance--aye, chance, free will, and necessity--no wise incompatible--all interweavingly working together. The straight warpof necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course--its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that;free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;and chance, though restrained in its play within the right linesof necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will,though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either,and has the last featuring blow at events.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a soundso strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly,that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stoodgazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing.High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego.His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched outlike a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries.To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps beingheard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's look-outsperched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs couldthat accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadenceas from Tashtego the Indian's.
As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildlyand eagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thoughthim some prophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate,and by those wild cries announcing their coming.
"There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"
"Where-away?"
"On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!"
Instantly all was commotion.
The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviatingand reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish thisfish from other tribes of his genus.
"There go flukes!" was now the cry from Tashtego;and the whales disappeared.
"Quick, steward!" cried Ahab. "Time! time!"
Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exactminute to Ahab.
The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gentlyrolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whaleshad gone down heading to leeward, we confidently lookedto see them again directly in advance of our bows.For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale when,sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless,while concealed beneath the surface, mills around, and swiftlyswims off in the opposite quarter--this deceitfulness of hiscould not now be in action; for there was no reason to supposethat the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any way alarmed,or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selectedfor shipkeepers--that is, those not appointed to the boats,by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head.The sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the linetubs were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust out;the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung overthe sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs.Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clungto the rail, while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale.So look the long line of man-of-war's men about to throwthemselves on board an enemy's ship.
But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that tookevery eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab,who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formedout of air.