Chapter 49.00: CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.

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CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
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It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about
the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg
and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an
additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow
preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in
the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible
self.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept
passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long
yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg,
standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the
threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly
drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign
all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting
dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time,
and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the
Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single,
ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to
admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This
warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own
shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,
Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof
slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;
and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding
contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s sword,
thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this
easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free will, and
necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working
together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its
ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only
tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given
threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines
of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though
thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last
featuring blow at events.

Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of
free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds whence
that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad
Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand
stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his
cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard
all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high
in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have
derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.

As he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly
peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or
seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing
their coming.

“There she blows! There! There! There! She blows! She blows!”

“Where-away?”

“On the lee-beam, about two miles off! A school of them!”

Instantly all was commotion.

The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and
reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other
tribes of his genus.

“There go flukes!” was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales
disappeared.

“Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! Time!”

Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact
minute to Ahab.

The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling
before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to
leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of
our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale
when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while
concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the
opposite quarter—this deceitfulness of his could not now be in
action; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego
had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of
the men selected for shipkeepers—that is, those not appointed to the
boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors
at the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their
places; the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three
boats swung over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs.
Outside of the bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail,
while one foot was expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long
line of man-of-war’s men about to throw themselves on board an enemy’s
ship.

But at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took
every eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was
surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.