Chapter 28.00: CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.

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CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
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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 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.

“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 valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint
stock-companies and nations; knaves, 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!