The Hunt For Moby Dick (Translated)

By Brian G. Spare, PhD

The Hunt For Moby Dick

It’s the most readable Moby-Dick! A story of yesterday rewritten for today’s reader. Brian G. Spare, PhD has abridged and updated mainly the narrative of Herman Melville’s literary fiction classic Moby-Dick to bring to light the “romance of adventure” novel Melville first intended.

From Nantucket round the Tip of Africa to the Sea of Japan, Captain Ahab stalks his foe in a mad quest for vengeance on the White Whale for maiming him.

“... To the last I grapple with thee ... thou damned whale ...”

Join in the excitement of this timeless epic. Become enthralled in this “romance of adventure”. Board the Pequod as we set sail in The Hunt For Moby Dick.

What makes this book unique?
• The text is updated/modernized while maintaining a sense of the era in which the story took place
• Strictly educational material is removed to streamline the novel leaving just the story
• A glossary of terms and phrases assists you
• Ship diagrams guide you through the Pequod as you read
• I feel this book, The Hunt For Moby Dick, is close to the “romance of adventure” novel Melville first intended to write.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781623098933

Book preview

York.

Chapter 1

Loomings

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago having little or no money and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It’s a way I have of driving off my discontent with life. Whenever it’s a damp and dreary November in my soul I must go to sea, and I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing strange in this for, if they knew it, almost all men cherish nearly the same feelings toward the ocean with me.

Now here are your insular city dwellers of Manhattan belted by the wharves surrounding their commerce. Right and left the streets take you waterward where that noble mole is washed by waves and cooled by ocean breezes. Look at the crowds of water gazers there. Walk round the city on a dreamy Sunday afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from there by Whitehall northward. What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town stand thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Men leaning against the piers, seated upon the pierheads, looking over the bulwarks of ships from China, or high aloft on the rigging as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen pent up in lath and plaster, tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? Why are they here?

But look. Here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water and seemingly bound for a dive. Nothing will content them but the extreme limit of the land. Loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. They must get as near the water as they possibly can without falling in, and there they stand, Inlanders all. They come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues - north, east, south, and west - and here they all unite.

Once more, say you’re in the country in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down to a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There’s magic in it! Let the most absent minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries. Stand that man on his legs, set his feet agoing, and he will infallibly lead you to water. Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.

Now here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand the trees, and here the sleepy meadow, over there the cattle, and from yonder cottage goes curling smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed into their hillside blue. But like leaves upon a shepherd’s head, all are in vain unless the shepherd’s eyes were fixed upon the magic of the stream before him.

Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other, crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger did you feel such a mystical vibration when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Surely all this is not without meaning. That thing we see in all rivers and oceans is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life, and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, I do not go as a passenger. A passenger must have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get seasick, grow quarrelsome, don’t sleep at nights, and do not enjoy themselves much as a general thing. No, I never go to sea as a passenger. Nor do I go as a Commodore or a Captain for I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. I detest trials and tribulations of every kind for it is enough for me I take care of myself.

When I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal masthead. True they order me about some and make me jump from spar to spar like a grasshopper. At first this sort of thing is unpleasant enough, but it touches off a sense of honour particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers or Randolphs or Hardicanutes, and it wears off in time. What of it if some old hunks of a sea captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? However they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is alright. Everybody else is served in much the same way, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulders and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world, between paying and being paid. Being paid, what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a moneyed man enter heaven. Ah, but how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. In this world headwinds are far more prevalent than winds from astern, so for the most part the commodore on the quarterdeck gets his air second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first, but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things and the leaders little suspect it.

After having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage. The invisible police officer of the Fates who secretly dogs me and influences me in some unaccountable way, can better answer than anyone else. Doubtless my going on this whaling voyage formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It’s a sort of brief interlude and solo in between more extensive performances. I take it this part of the bill must have run something like this:

‘Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.’

‘WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.’

‘BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN’

I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage. Others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces. Yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives that were cunningly presented to me under various disguises. They induced me to performing the part I did, and cajoled me into the delusion that it was a choice I made from my own unbiased free will and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale itself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. The wild and distant seas where it rolled its island bulk, and the nameless perils of the whale helped sway me to my wish. With other men perhaps, such things would not have been inducements. But as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things extreme and remote. I love to sail in forbidden seas and on barbarous coasts. I am quick to perceive a horror and could still be social with it since it is good to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, the whaling voyage was welcome. The great floodgates of the wondrous world swung open to the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose. Two and two there floated into my innermost soul the endless processions of the whale, and midmost of them all, one grand hooded phantom like a snow hill in the air.

Chapter 2

The Spouter Inn

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet bag, tucked it under my arm and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhattan, I duly arrived in New Bedford on a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and no way of getting there till Monday.

Most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at New Bedford to embark on their voyage, but I had no intention of doing so. My mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft. There was a fine boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island which pleased me. Though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, Nantucket was her great original, the place where the first dead American whale was stranded.

Now having a night, a day, and still another night before me in New Bedford ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concern as to where I would eat and sleep. It was a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious fingers I searched my pocket and only brought up a few pieces of silver.

So, wherever you go Ishmael, said I to myself as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag and comparing the gloom toward the north with and the darkness toward the south, wherever in your wisdom you decide to sleep for the night, be sure to inquire the price and don’t be too particular.

With halting steps I paced the streets and passed the sign of ‘The Crossed Harpoons’ but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the ‘Swordfish Inn’, there came such fervent rays that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard pavement. Rather weary for me when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly again thought I pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within.

But go on Ishmael, said I at last; don’t go here. Get away from before the door your patched boots are stopping the way.

So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward for there doubtless were the cheapest if not the cheeriest inns. Such dreary streets! Blocks of blackness, not from houses, stood on either side and here and there a candle would shine like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted.

Moving on I at last came to a dim light not far from the docks. Hearing a forlorn creaking in the air I looked up to see a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it with a faded picture of a tall straight jet of misty spray and these words underneath – ‘The Spouter Inn: Peter Coffin.’

Coffin? – Spouter? –Rather ominous in that particular connection thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket they say, and I suppose this Peter is an emigrant from there. The light looked so dim, and for the time the place seemed quiet enough. The dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and the swinging sign had a poverty stricken sort of creak. It was a queer sort of gable-ended old house with one side leaning over sadly as it stood on a sharp bleak corner where a tempestuous wind kept up a worse howling than ever.

Here’s the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea-coffee, thought I.

Entering the Spouter Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, cramped entryway with old fashioned wainscots reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked and in every way defaced, that from the unequal cross lights by which you viewed it, you could never arrive at an understanding of its purpose. But what most puzzled you was a long, portentous black mass hovering in the centre with three blue dim perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. This dirty scratched picture was truly enough to drive a nervous man to distraction. Yet there was a sort of indefinite, half-attained oath you’d make with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale, a blasted heath, the unnatural combat of the four primal elements or the breaking up of the ice bound stream of Time. But at last, all of these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst which, once found out, was a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish. Maybe even the great leviathan itself.

In fact, partly based on the opinions of many aged sailors with whom I conversed with on the subject, the artist’s design to me seemed this. The picture represents a Cape-Horner ship in a great hurricane. The half-foundered ship was weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible, and an exasperated whale purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling itself upon the three mastheads.

The opposite wall of this entryway was hung all over with an array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws, others tufted with knots of human hair, and one was sickle-shaped with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new mown grass by a long armed scythe. You shuddered as you gazed and wondered what monstrous savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons, and among them was a once long lance, now warped, fifty years ago Nathan Swain killed fifteen whales between sunrise and sunset. And that harpoon, so twisted now, was flung in Javan seas and run away with by a whale years afterward slain off the Cape of Bianco. The original iron entered near the tail and like a restless needle travelled a full forty feet and at last was found imbedded in the hump.

Crossing this dusky entry and on through the low-arched way cut through old wrinkled planks, you’d almost fancy you trod in some old craft’s cockpit, especially on such a howling night when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long low shelflike table covered with cracked glass cases filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the far angle of the room stood a darkened den, the bar, which was a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that as it may, there stood the vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw so wide a stagecoach could drive beneath it. And in those jaws of swift destruction bustled a little withered old man, Jonah they called him, who for their money dearly sold the sailors deliriums and death.

Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders outside, the inside of these villainous green goggling glasses was deceitfully tapered downward to a cheating bottom. Parallel lines were rudely etched into the glasses. Fill to this mark, and your charge is a penny, then to this mark, a penny more, and so on to full glass, the Cape Horn measure, which you can gulp down for a shilling.

Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table examining by a dim light diverse specimens of scrimshander. I sought the landlord and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room was told that his house was full.

But avast, he added, ye hain’t no objections to sharin’ a harpooner’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose ye’re goin’ awhalin’, so ye’d better get used to that sort of thing."

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed. And if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooner might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooner did not object, rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with half of any decent man’s blanket.

I thought so. All right then, take a seat. Supper? You want supper? It’ll be ready soon.

I sat down on an old wooden bench carved all over. At one end an old sailor was further adorning it with his jackknife stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at carving a ship under full sail, but he wasn’t making much headway thought I.

At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as ice. No fire at all. The landlord said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles each in a winding sheet. We had to button up our monkey jackets and hold our lips to cups of scalding tea with our half–frozen fingers. But the food was of the most substantial kind, meat and potatoes and dumplings too. Good heavens! Dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green boxcoat addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner.

My boy, said the landlord, ye’ll have a nightmare for sure.

Landlord, I whispered, that’s not the harpooner is it?

Oh no, said he looking a sort of diabolically funny, the harpooner’s a dark-complexioned chap, he never eats dumplings, he don’t. He eats nothing but steaks, and likes ‘em rare.

The devil he does, says I, where is he that harpooner? Is he here?

He’ll be here afore long, was the answer.

Supper over, the company went back to the bar room. Not knowing what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as an onlooker. Presently a rioting noise was heard outside. Jumping up the landlord cried, That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seen her reported in the offing this morning. Three years’ voyage and a full ship. Hurrah boys, now we’ll have the latest news from Fiji.

A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry. The door flung open and in rolled a wild set of mariners. They were wrapped in their shaggy watch coats with their heads muffled in woollen comforters all darned and ragged and their beards stiff with icicles. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth where the wrinkled old Jonah soon and poured them out brimmers all round. The liquor soon went to their heads as it generally does.

It was now about nine o’clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after this ruckus, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred ro me just previous to the entrance of seamen. No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. I don’t know how it is, but people like to be private when they’re sleeping. When it comes to sleeping with a stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger is a harpooner, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Is there any earthly reason why I, as a sailor, should sleep two in a bed no more than anybody else? To be sure, sailors all sleep together in one room. But each has his own hammock, and covers himself with his own blanket, and sleeps is his own skin. The more I pondered over this harpooner, the more I detested the thought of sleeping with him. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooner ought to be home and going bedward. Suppose he should stumble in upon me at midnight. How should I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?

Landlord, I’ve changed my mind about that harpooner. I shan’t sleep with him. I’ll try this bench here.

Just as you please, I’m sorry I can’t spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and the boards are rough here. But wait, I’ve got a carpenter’s plane there on the bar. I’ll make ye snug enough.

So he procured the plane, dusted the bench with his old silk handkerchief, and vigorously set to work all the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left till at last the plane came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord nearly sprained his wrist and I told him for heaven’s sake to wait, the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business leaving me there.

I measured the bench, and found it was a foot too short, but that could be mended with a chair. Still it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one, so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall leaving a little room between for my back to settle down in. But I soon found there came such a draught of cold air over me from under the window sill that this plan would never do at all. Especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the very spot where I had thought to spend the night.

The devil fetch that harpooner thought I. But stop, couldn’t I steel a march on him, bolt the door on the inside, and jump into his bed not to be woken by his most violent knocking? It seemed a good idea, but upon second thought I dismissed it. For who could tell if the next morning the harpooner might be standing in the entry ready to knock me down as soon as I popped out of the room.

Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a sufferable night unless on some other person’s bed, I began to think that after all I might be making unwarranted prejudices against this unknown harpooner.

I’ll wait awhile, thought I, he must be dropping in before long. I’ll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all. But though the other boarders kept coming in and going to bed, there was no sign of my harpooner.

Landlord, said I, what kind of a chap is he? Does he always keep such late hours? It was hard upon twelve o’clock.

The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension.

No. he answered, generally he’s an early bird. Early to bed and early to rise. Yes he’s the bird that catches the worm. But tonight he went out apeddlin’ and I don’t see what on earth keeps him so late, unless, maybe he can’t sell his head.

Sell his head? What sort of a bamboozling story is this you’re telling me? I was getting into a towering rage. Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooner is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?

That’s precisely it, said the landlord, and I told him he couldn’t sell it here, the market’s overstocked.

With what? shouted I.

With heads to be sure. Ain’t there too many heads in the world?

I tell you what it is landlord, said I, you’d better stop spinning that yarn to me, I’m not green.

Maybe not, taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, but I rather guess you’ll be done brown if that here harpooner hears you aslanderin’ his head.

Landlord, said I, going up to him as cool as I might, landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another. About this harpooner whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying stories about this man you design for my bedfellow. I demand you speak out and tell me who and what this harpooner is and whether I shall be safe to spend the night with him.

Well, said the landlord, fetching a long breath, that’s a pretty long sermon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, this here harpooner I’ve been telling ye of has just arrived from the South Seas where he bought up a lot if embalmed New Zealand heads, great curios you know, and he’s tryin’ to sell ‘em tonight ‘cause tomorrow’s Sunday, and it wouldn’t do to be sellin’ human heads about the streets when folks is goin’ to churches. He wanted to last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin’ out the door with four heads strung like onions on a string.

That cleared up the mystery and showed the landlord had no idea of fooling me. But at the same time what could I think of a harpooner who stayed out on a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolaters? I considered the matter a moment. Then upstairs we went and was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, furnished with a prodigious bed almost big enough indeed for any four harpooners to sleep abreast.

There, said the landlord, placing the candle on a worn old sea chest that did double duty as a wash stand and centre table, make yourself comfortable now and good night to ye.

Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. I glanced round the room, and besides the bed and centre table I saw no other furniture belonging to the place but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room was a hammock lashed up and thrown upon the floor in one corner, a large seaman’s bag containing the harpooner’s clothes no doubt in lieu of a land trunk, a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fireplace and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.

But what is this on the chest? I took it up and held it close to the light and felt it, smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion. I can compare it to nothing but a large door mat ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooner would get into a door mat and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on to try it and it weighed me down being uncommonly shaggy and thick. It felt a little damp as though this mysterious harpooner had been wearing it on a rainy day. Going up in it to a bit of looking glass stuck against the wall I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck.

I sat down on the side of the bed and commenced thinking about that head peddling harpooner and his door mat. After thinking some time on the bedside, I