Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
Ishmael stands at the helm, wrapped in shadow, watching the inferno. The demonic shapes breed visions in his mind. He starts from sleep to find himself disoriented—no compass visible, only red flashes in black gloom. He has turned completely around, facing the stern. He spins back just in time to keep the ship from capsizing.
Do not gaze long into fire, Ishmael warns. Never dream with a hand on the helm; turn not thy back to the compass, but accept the first hint of the hitching tiller. Believe not the artificial fire when its redness makes all things look ghastly. The sun conceals nothing—not the ocean, earth’s dark side, nor any wilderness of grief. A man with more joy than sorrow cannot be true. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s; Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. Yet there exists a Catskill eagle in certain souls: it can plunge into the deepest ravines and still rise into sunlight, and even at its lowest swoop, it flies higher than any bird on the plain.
The forecastle glows like a shrine of canonized kings, lamps flashing on sleeping sailors. Merchant seamen find oil scarcer than queens’ milk, dressing and eating in darkness, but the whaleman seeks the food of light and lives in light, replenishing his lamps at the try-works, burning oil sweet as April grass butter.
The leviathan has been hunted and processed, leaving only the final act of decanting the warm oil into casks. As the ship pitches in the midnight sea, enormous barrels are slewed across the slippery deck while sailors hammer the hoops, acting temporarily as coopers. Once the last pint is secured, the hatches are unsealed and the casks descend to their final rest in the hold, sealing the whale’s return to the depths.
A profound transformation follows. Where the decks recently streamed with blood and the ship seemed a leviathan of chaos, the unmanufactured oil now possesses a cleansing virtue. Using potent lye made from burned scraps, the crew scrubs the bulwarks and rigging until the vessel resembles a silent, neat merchantman. The men wash and dress in fresh clothes, stepping onto the immaculate planks like bridegrooms from Holland, humorously discussing parlors and demanding napkins.
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