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1In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian
2Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not. Returning from my first morning
3stroll, I again sallied out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and
4mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm.
5Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned,
6only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other,
7as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent
8islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on
9either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:-- SACRED TO THE
10MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
11November 1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS
12ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats' crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who
13were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here
14placed by their surviving SHIPMATES. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows of his boat
15was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August 3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.
16Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was
17surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous
18curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was
19the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of
20the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the
21unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings
22of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight
23of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the
24green grass; who standing among flowers can say--here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in
25bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those
26immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and
27refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in
28the cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a
29universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it
30is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do
31not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies
32pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies
33antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we
34nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore
35but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But
36Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. It needs
37scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the
38murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same
39fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it
40seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a
41speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter
42of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking
43at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the
44thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it
45is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my
46soul, Jove himself cannot.
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