This is the sort of stuff that I've been noting down through the years, and my brain is littered with the scraps of so-called intellect. I am thankful that there is no such item as a mental Post-It! or else my head would be one yellow clump of gumsuch. (Yes, I did just invent that word.) So, that's why Lewis Carroll made it between the covers of The Occasional Margareader, but there's only one excuse for leaving out Ishmael, Queequeg, Capt Ahab, and their little buddy Moby Dick. And that excuse is simply space. No, not "the final frontier" space, but the number-of-pages space.“You never know where your window to the world will appear, but I do know that they seem to be fabricated out of dreams, visions and words from books. If you desire them to be more than that, then you follow the white rabbit down the hole like Alice or head to Nantucket like Ishmael. Now I know that Alice didn’t write back from an Internet Café in Wonderland and Ishmael never had the convenience of looking at his little handheld GPS unit and entering a quick waypoint titled “white whale” when Moby Dick first showed himself to the crew of the Pequod."
JB's liner notes to Far Side of the World (2001)
While I did locate the pages in Melville's epic novel wherein "Moby Dick first showed himself to the crew of the Pequod," the best context for presenting them still required quite a few out of the 400 in this anthology. And keeping Melville in, meant keeping out two or three other writers. So, I made that editorial decision to remove those pages from Moby Dick and save them for a time such as this.
Now, I could send you off on a wild goose chase (better yet, a wild whale chase!) looking for this; however, I'm not that kinda guy. So, here's a selection from "The Chase - First Day" / Chapter 133 (Holy cow! Are there really THAT many chapters before they first spot that damn thing?)
The Chase - First Day
a selection from
MOBY DICK / Chapter 133
That night, in the mid-watch when the old man - as was his wont at intervals - stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.MOBY DICK / Chapter 133
The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
"Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!"
Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes in their hands.
"What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
"Nothing, nothing sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply.
"T'gallant sails!- stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!"
All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for swaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were hoisting him thither, when, while but two thirds of the way aloft, and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the air. "There she blows!- there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"
Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian's head was almost on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
"And did none of ye see it before?" cried Ahab, hailing the perched men all around him.
"I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I cried out," said Tashtego.
"Not the same instant; not the same - no, the doubloon is mine! Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the White Whale first. There she blows!- there she blows!- there she blows! There again!- there again!" he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale's visible jets. "He's going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water! All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; lower, lower,- quick, quicker!" and he slid through the air to the deck.
"He is heading straight to leeward, sir," cried Stubb, "right away from us; cannot have seen the ship yet."
"Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!- brace up! Shiver her!- shiver her!- So; well that! Boats, boats!"
Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were dropped; all the boat-sails set- all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
-- 30 --
