Chapter 51.00: CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.

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CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair
we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical
joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects
that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing
dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all
events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible
and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion
gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and
worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all
these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and
jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old
joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man
only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of
his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing
most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing
like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial,
desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the
Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.

“Queequeg,” said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck,
and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water;
“Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?” Without
much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand
that such things did often happen.

“Mr. Stubb,” said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his
oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; “Mr. Stubb, I
think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief
mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose
then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy
squall is the height of a whaleman’s discretion?”

“Certain. I’ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape
Horn.”

“Mr. Flask,” said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close
by; “you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell me
whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an
oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death’s
jaws?”

“Can’t you twist that smaller?” said Flask. “Yes, that’s the law. I should
like to see a boat’s crew backing water up to a whale face foremost. Ha,
ha! The whale would give them squint for squint, mind that!”

Here then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement of
the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings in
the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of common
occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the superlatively
critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life into the
hands of him who steered the boat—oftentimes a fellow who at that
very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft
with his own frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster
to our own particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck’s driving
on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, and considering that
Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great heedfulness in the
fishery; considering that I belonged to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck’s
boat; and finally considering in what a devil’s chase I was implicated,
touching the White Whale: taking all things together, I say, I thought I
might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will. “Queequeg,” said
I, “come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and legatee.”

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their
last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond
of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I had
done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the present
occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart.
Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that
Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so
many months or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself; my death and
burial were locked up in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and
contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the
bars of a snug family vault.

Now then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,
here goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the
devil fetch the hindmost.