Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Daggoo’s rescue attempt

Daggoo first comes to his senses amid the general consternation, shouting “Man overboard!” He secures his foot in the bucket to grip the whip, and the hoisters raise him high to the top of the head almost instantly. Meanwhile, a terrible tumult ensues as the whale’s head heaves below the sea surface. Suddenly, one of the enormous hooks suspending the head tears out, and the massive structure swings sideways, causing the ship to reel like it has been struck by an iceberg. The remaining hook strains under the entire weight. The seamen yell for Daggoo to come down, but he clears the foul line and rams the bucket into the collapsed well, hoping Tashtego will grasp it. Stubb protests this approach, comparing it to ramming a cartridge. The entire head then drops into the sea with a thunder-boom, and Daggoo clings to the pendulous tackles while Tashtego sinks to the bottom.

Queequeg’s rescue dive

As the blinding vapor clears, a naked Queequeg appears with a boarding-sword, hovering over the bulwarks for one swift moment before diving to the rescue. The crew holds their breath as ripples are counted and no sign of either the sinker or the diver appears. Hands jump into a boat alongside and push off from the ship. Daggoo, from his swinging perch overhead, suddenly cries “Ha! ha!” and spots an arm thrust upright from the blue waves. Daggoo shouts “Both! both!—it is both!” as Queequeg is seen striking out with one hand while clutching Tashtego’s long hair with the other. Both are drawn into the waiting boat and brought to deck, though Tashtego is long in recovering consciousness.

Explanation of the rescue

The narrator explains how Queequeg accomplished this noble rescue: he dived after the slowly descending head, using his keen sword to make side lunges near its bottom, scuttling a large hole there. He then dropped his sword, thrust his long arm far inward and upward, and hauled out Tashtego by the head. Queequeg initially encountered a leg presented to him but, knowing this was not the proper position and would cause trouble, he thrust back the leg and executed a somersault on the Indian. With the next attempt, Tashtego emerged head foremost. The great head itself continued to behave as well as could be expected.

Commentary on midwifery

The narrator celebrates Queequeg’s “courage and great skill in obstetrics,” noting how the deliverance of Tashtego was accomplished in spite of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments. He draws a moral lesson: “Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.”

The story’s incredibility addressed

The narrator acknowledges that this adventure will seem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have witnessed someone falling into a cistern ashore—an accident that not seldom happens, and with less reason given the exceeding slipperiness of the Sperm Whale’s well-curb.

Explanation of the whale’s head

Addressing a potential objection about how the head could sink when it is the lightest, most corky part of the whale, the narrator explains that by the time Tashtego fell in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving only the dense tendinous wall of the well—a double welded, hammered substance much heavier than seawater. This heavy substance would sink in seawater like lead, though the rest of the head remaining undetached caused it to sink slowly and deliberately, giving Queequeg a fair chance for his “running delivery.”

Hypothetical death by spermaceti

The narrator muses that had Tashtego perished in that head, it would have been a precious death—smothered in the whitest, daintiest fragrant spermaceti, coffined in the whale’s inner sanctum. He compares this to the “delicious death” of an Ohio honey-hunter who leaned too far into a hollow tree filled with honey and was sucked in, dying embalmed. He concludes with a philosophical question: “How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?”