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Updated: May 8, 2025
Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod. As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair. The Monkey-Rope.
Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark he was provided with still another protection.
This improvement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in order to afford to the imperilled harpooneer the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his monkey-rope holder. I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the whale and the ship where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and swaying of both.
For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake.
Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.* *The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod that the monkey and his holder were ever tied together.
But the undergrowth was so dense and impenetrable that it was not until we had traversed quite a mile of the beach, under the rays of a scorching sun, that we at length found a spot where, by cutting and hacking the monkey-rope and creepers with our knives, we finally succeeded in working our way into a valley enclosed between two ranges of hills running practically parallel.
They then brought the tops of the saplings all together and bound them; thus producing a skeleton structure exactly shaped like a bee-hive. This skeleton they then strengthened by interweaving it with stout lianas or "monkey-rope," as the sailors call the long, tough stems of the creepers that interlace themselves about the trees in tropical countries.
The first act of the wretch was to despatch his four assistants into the forest, whence they returned in a short time with three long slender poles and a considerable quantity of creeper or monkey-rope.
Muata pointed to notches cut in a lateral branch, and walked to the end of it, steadying himself by holding to a guiding branch above; then passed over the slight intervening distance between the last notch and the next tree by swinging on a vine tendril, otherwise a "monkey-rope."
For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honour demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake.
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