Chapter 80.00: CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.

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CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
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Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect
posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part
where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a
light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts, travelling
through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that it hangs down
from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it is caught and
firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other part,
the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit
of the head. There—still high elevated above the rest of the
company, to whom he vivaciously cries—he seems some Turkish Muezzin
calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A
short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for
the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he
proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house,
sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this
cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a
well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other
end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert
hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom
another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into
the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it
entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up
comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid’s pail of new milk.
Carefully lowered from its height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by
an appointed hand, and quickly emptied into a large tub. Then remounting
aloft, it again goes through the same round until the deep cistern will
yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder
and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of
the pole have gone down.

Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time in this way;
several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a
queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild Indian,
was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his one-handed hold
on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or whether the place
where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the Evil One
himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular
reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden, as
the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up—my God! Poor
Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well,
dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a
horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!

“Man overboard!” cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first
came to his senses. “Swing the bucket this way!” and putting one foot into
it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself,
the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost before
Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there was a
terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before lifeless head
throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment
seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian
unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous depth to which he
had sunk.

At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing the
whip—which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles—a
sharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all, one
of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a vast
vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship reeled and
shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook, upon which the
entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be on the point of
giving way; an event still more likely from the violent motions of the
head.

“Come down, come down!” yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand
holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he would
still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line, rammed
down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the buried
harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.

“In heaven’s name, man,” cried Stubb, “are you ramming home a cartridge
there? —Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket
on top of his head? Avast, will ye!”

“Stand clear of the tackle!” cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket.

Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped
into the sea, like Niagara’s Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly
relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and
all caught their breath, as half swinging—now over the sailors’
heads, and now over the water—Daggoo, through a thick mist of spray,
was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,
buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea!
But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with
a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over
the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had
dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye
counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the
sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat
alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.

“Ha! Ha!” cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch
overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust
upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust
forth from the grass over a grave.

“Both! Both! —it is both!”—cried Daggoo again with a joyful
shout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one
hand, and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into
the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was
long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the
slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges
near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his
sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out
poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a
leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be,
and might occasion great trouble;—he had thrust back the leg, and by
a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so
that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way—head
foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be
expected.

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg,
the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully
accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently
hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten.
Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing,
riding and rowing.

I know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header’s will be sure to seem
incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have either seen
or heard of some one’s falling into a cistern ashore; an accident which
not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than the Indian’s,
considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the Sperm Whale’s
well.

But, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought
the tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and
most corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of a
far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at all,
but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had been nearly
emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but the dense tendinous
wall of the well—a double welded, hammered substance, as I have
before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of which sinks in
it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking in this substance
was in the present instance materially counteracted by the other parts of
the head remaining undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and
deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his
agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running
delivery, so it was.

Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious
perishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant
spermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and
sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be
recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking
honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it,
that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How
many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly
perished there?