3
HERMAN MELVILLE
trip to Rockaway Beach? 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 yourself feel such a
mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out
of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did
the Greeks give it a separate deity, and make him the own brother of
Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the
meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp
the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and
was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and
oceans. It 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, and begin to be over conscious of
my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a
passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a
purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers
get sea-sick–grow quarrelsome–don’t sleep of nights–do not enjoy
themselves much, as a general thing;–no, I never go as a passenger;
nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commo-
dore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of
such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all hon-
orable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatso-
ever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without
taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as
for going as cook,–though I confess there is considerable glory in
that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board–yet, somehow, I
never fancied broiling fowls;–though once broiled, judiciously but-
tered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will
speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than
I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon
broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those
creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.
No, 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 mast-head.
True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar
to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of
MOBY
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DICK
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thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particu-
larly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van
Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just
previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording
it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of
you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the schoolmaster
to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to
enable you to grin and bear it. But even this 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? What does that indignity amount
to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you
think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I
promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular in-
stance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old
sea-captains may order me about–however they may thump and
punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right;
that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way–
either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the
universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s
shoulder-blades, 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. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable
infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being
paid,–what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a
man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so ear-
nestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills; and that on no
account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we con-
sign ourselves to perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome ex-
ercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head
winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you
never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Com-
modore on the quarterdeck gets his atmosphere at second hand from
the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so.
