.. < chapter xxvi 26  KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES >


     The chief mate of the Pequod was

Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent.  He was a long,

earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure

hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit.  Transported to

the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled

.. <p 112 >

ale.  He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or

upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous.  Only some thirty

arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical

superfluousness.  But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the

token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any

bodily blight.  It was merely the condensation of the man.  He was by no

means ill-looking; quite the contrary.  His pure tight skin was an excellent

fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and

strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure

for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or

torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to

do well in all climates.  Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the

yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted

through life.  A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a

telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds.  Yet, for all

his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which

at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the

rest.  Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural

reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly

incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some

organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from

ignorance.  Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.  And if at

times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his

far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him

still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still

further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men,

restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more

perilous vicissitudes of the fishery.  I will have no man in my boat, said

starbuck, who is not afraid of a whale.  by this, he seemed to mean, not only

that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair

estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a

far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

.. <p 113 >


     Aye, aye, said Stubb, the second mate, Starbuck, there, is as careful a

man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery.  But we shall ere long see what

that word careful precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost

any other whale hunter.  Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him

courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always

at hand upon all mortally practical occasions.  Besides, he thought, perhaps,

that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits

of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted.

Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for

persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him.  For,

thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my

living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had

been so killed Starbuck well knew.  What doom was his own father's?  Where, in

the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?  With

memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain

superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which

could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme.  But it

was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible

experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these

things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under

suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his

courage up.  And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly,

visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the

conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational

horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more

spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of

an enraged and mighty man.  But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any

instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I

have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking,

to expose the fall of valor in the soul.  Men may seem detestable as joint

stock-companies and nations; knaves,

.. <p 114 >

fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but

man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing

creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run

to throw their costliest robes.  That immaculate manliness we feel within

ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer

character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle

of a valor-ruined man.  Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight,

completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars.  But this

august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that

abounding dignity which has no robed investiture.  Thou shalt see it shining

in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity

which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself!  The great God

absolute!  The centre and circumference of all democracy!  His omnipresence,

our divine equality!  If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and

castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round


     them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased,

among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall

touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a

rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear

me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one royal

mantle of humanity over all my kind!  Bear me out in it, thou great democratic


     God!  who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic

pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the

stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew

Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst

thunder him higher than a throne!  Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly

marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear

me out in it, O God!

.. <p 115 >