Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care-free license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was over.
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's; crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating- an ugly sound enough- so much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretion. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.
But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it was something as a streetdoor enters a house; turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!
Once more in this passage, we have some comedy mixed, at the end, with a fairly harrowing description of Ahab's soul as a wild creature, trapped in the trunk of his body. It's not a pleasant ending to the chapter. It's like Melville, amid the hilarity and comic hyperbole, has to remind his reader of the specter of Ahab, which looms almost as large as the white whale itself on the page. "Don't forget," Melville seems to be saying, knocking his knuckles on the wooden dinner table.
I just finished a poetry reading a little over an hour ago. Bigfoot poems, which have become somewhat of an obsession with me--the same way that Dickinson wrote about death or Whitman about the Civil War and spears of grass. The event took place at the university where I teach. It was the first time that I had been invited to read on-campus.
It took place in the atrium of the the university's library. The rear wall of the room is floor-to-ceiling windows, and a beautiful April sun was filling the room with warmth and light. I had a pretty good sized crowd--students and friends and poets and professors. All come to see and hear my big hairy alter ego (or is that altar ego, since Bigfoot approaches myth?).
I have to admit that I was quite nervous before it all began. I have done dozens of poetry readings, but never in front of a "home" crowd like this. And certainly never as a solo act. Everything rested on the wild creature, trapped inside the trunk of my body. I had to let my inner Bigfoot loose to howl. And that's what I did. For thirty or forty minutes, I let Sassy (my name for my Bigfoot self) roam the university library, barking and coughing poetry at people.
I think it worked. People were laughing and clapping. At the end, when I asked if there were any questions, people actually raised their hands, something that usually doesn't happen at my poetry readings. I talked for another ten or 15 minutes, and everyone seemed genuinely interested in what I was saying.
I'm not a person that basks in the limelight, which is a strange thing for me to say since I'm a poet. Poets are supposed to love reading poems to groups of people, and part of me does. However, my inner Bigfoot is truly a shy, retiring animal. More comfortable in a cave than in a Speedo on a beach. Preferring to order pizza than drive to a restaurant. My Bigfoot is an introvert.
Saint Marty is thankful today for all of his friends who came to hear him howl this afternoon.
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