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Updated: May 27, 2025
The first officer, or the mate as he is always called PAR EXCELLENCE, was an older man than the captain, but a good seaman, a good whaleman, and a gentleman. Which combination I found to be a fact, although hard to believe possible at the time. The second mate was a Portuguese about forty years of age, with a face like one of Vandyke's cavaliers, but as I now learned, a perfect fiend when angered.
The officer of the deck had only time to hail, and she answered, as she went into the fog again, something about Bristol. Probably a whaleman from Bristol, Rhode Island, bound out. The fog continued through the night, with a very light breeze, before which we ran to the eastward, literally feeling our way along.
No: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim ages. Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might include.
He had been absent from home only six days, but the time seemed almost as long to him as a three years' cruise to a New Bedford whaleman.
Then, if the whaleman be active and daring, a few well-directed strokes may be got in which will promptly settle the business out of hand. Now, when my whale sounded he was to all appearance as frightened a beast as one could wish one who had run himself out endeavouring to get away from his enemies, and as a last resource had dived into the quietness below in the vain hope to get away.
Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman? Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that? Jonah Historically Regarded. Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the preceding chapter.
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit Carson that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted.
Toward morning, the wind having become light, we crossed our royal and skysail yards, and at daylight we were seen under a cloud of sail, having royals and skysails fore and aft. The ``spouter, as the sailors call a whaleman, had sent up his main top-gallant mast and set the sail, and made signal for us to heave to.
Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiselled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders.
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