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1It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most insignificant
2of the Pequod's crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated
3craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own. Now, in the whale
4ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is
5to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows
6as the men comprising the boats' crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the
7ship, that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick-name,
8Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight,
9so gloomy-jolly. In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and a white one, of equal
10developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull
11and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial,
12jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish
13than any other race. For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five Fourth of Julys
14and New Year's Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its
15brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets. But Pip loved life, and all life's peaceable
16securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly
17blurred his brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was
18destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre
19with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and
20at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in
21the clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when
22the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and
23then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally
24superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen
25from the King of Hell. But let us to the story. It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb's after-oarsman
26chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place. The
27first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness; but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with
28the whale; and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb observing him, took care, afterwards, to
29exhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful. Now upon the second
30lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which
31happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to
32leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale line coming against his chest, he
33breasted it overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That instant the
34stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the
35chocks of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around his chest and neck.
36Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife
37from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?"
38Meantime Pip's blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In less than half a minute,
39this entire thing happened. "Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was saved. So soon as he
40recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting
41these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip
42officially; and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never jump from a boat, Pip,
43except--but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is your
44true motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when Leap from the boat, is still better. Moreover, as if
45perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a
46margin to jump in for the future; Stubb suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, "Stick to
47the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We can't afford to lose whales by the likes
48of you; a whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don't jump any
49more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which
50propensity too often interferes with his benevolence. But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It
51was under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time he did not breast out the line; and hence,
52when the whale started to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller's trunk. Alas! Stubb was but too
53true to his word. It was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away,
54all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater's skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip's
55ebon head showed like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when he fell so rapidly astern. Stubb's inexorable back
56was turned upon him; and the whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and
57Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely
58castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest. Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the
59practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense
60concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how when sailors in a
61dead calm bathe in the open sea--mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides. But had Stubb
62really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No; he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in
63his wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly, and pick him up; though,
64indeed, such considerations towards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested by the
65hunters in all similar instances; and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward,
66so called, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and armies. But it so happened, that
67those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and Stubb's
68boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip's ringed horizon began to expand
69around him miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little negro went
70about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned
71the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange
72shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed
73his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,
74God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the
75treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and
76wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic;
77and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing
78is common in that fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself.
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