Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

The Grog Ritual

Ahab calls for the great measure of grog. After receiving the brimming pewter, he orders the harpooneers to produce their weapons. He ranges them before him near the capstan with harpoons in hand, while his three mates stand at his side with lances and the rest of the crew forms a circle. He searches the faces of every man, comparing their wild eyes to prairie wolves meeting their leader’s eye before rushing on a bison. He commands them to drink and pass the heavy flagon, emphasizing short draughts and long swallows as the hot rum “spiralizes” through them and “forks out at the serpent-snapping eye.” He refills the pewter and addresses his “braves,” explaining he has mustered them to revive a noble custom of his fisherman fathers.

The Harpoon Pledge

Ahab orders the mates to cross their lances full before him, then grasps the three radiating lances at their crossed center while twitching them nervously, attempting through some nameless interior volition to shock them with the same fiery emotion accumulated within him. The three mates quail before his strong, sustained, mystic aspect—Stubb and Flask look sideways while Starbuck’s honest eye falls downright. Ahab appoints the three mates as cupbearers to the three harpooneers, invoking the Pope washing beggars’ feet with his tiara. The harpooneers silently obey and stand with the detached iron parts of their harpoons, barbs up. Ahab fills the harpoon sockets with the grog, comparing it to a murderous chalice. He commands the harpooneers to drink and swear, addressing them as men who man the deathful whaleboat’s bow: “Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!” The long barbed steel goblets are lifted, and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits are quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck pales, turns, and shivers.