Loomings

From Mellville's Moby Dick

“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 become overconscience 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 a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get seasick �" 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 to sea as a commodore, 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 honorable, respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and whatnot. And as for going as cook �" though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on shipboard �" yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls; though once broiled, judiciously buttered, 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 idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of the those creatures in their huge bake houses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as the simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down in the forecastle, aloft there to the royal masthead. 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 thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly 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 a 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 any less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea captains may order 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 to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! 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. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent that winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the commodore on the quarterdeck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so.  …”

 

Loomings from Moby Dick

Herman Melville

 

           

Author's Note

I'm reading the book; you should too.

Reviews

[Marie]

Yes, I probably should...