Chapter 99 The Doubloon
Chapter 99 The Doubloon
Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck. Taking regular turns at the mainmast, sometimes he was wont to pause, strangely eyeing the riveted gold coin there. One morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them.
Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of the heart of gorgeous hills. Though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale’s talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun’s disks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes’ summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now pausing.
“This round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, ’tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here’s stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.”
“No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must have left their mouldings there since yesterday,” murmured Starbuck to himself. “The old man seems to read Belshazzar’s awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly. He goes below; let me read.” “A dark valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely.”
“There now’s the old Mogul,” soliloquized Stubb by the try-works, “he’s been twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with faces which I should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it now in Corlaer’s Hook, I’d not look at it very long ere spending it. But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and let’s hear what he’ll have to say. There; he’s before it; he’ll out with something presently.”
“I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what’s all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that’s true; and at two cents the cigar, here’s nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy ’em out.”
“Shall
I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a foolish look to
it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish look to it.”
“Ho! more and more. This way comes Pip—poor boy! He too has been watching all
of these interpreters—myself included—and look now, he comes to read. Stand
away again and hear him. Hark!”
“Here’s the ship’s navel, this doubloon here. How did it get there? And so they’ll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious gold!—the green miser’ll hoard ye soon!"
Link to Chapter 100 The Pequod Meets the Samuel Enderby.
Abridger Notes
This chapter completely abandons Ishmael as narrator – the narrator of this chapter is an omniscient one – a grand screenwriter. Though Stubb plays an intermediate narrator – an observer who is in turn observed. This chapter is theater.
As a coin collector I am curious about the coin itself, and Starbuck’s association of the three mountain peaks to the Trinity.
Multimedia Chapter 99 The Doubloon
Original Chapter 99 The
Doubloon with Deletions
Ere now it has been
related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either
limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in the multiplicity of
other things requiring narration it has not been added how that sometimes in
these walks, when most plunged in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn
at each spot, and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object
before him. When he halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the
pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed
intensity of his purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused
before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the
riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness,
only dashed with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.
But one
morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the
strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first
time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever
significance might lurk in them. And some certain significance lurks in all
things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an
empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to
fill up some morass in the Milky Way.
Now this doubloon was
of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence,
east and west, over golden sands, the head-waters of many a Pactolus flow. And
though now nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of
copper spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still
preserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and
every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded
with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless
every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set
apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their
sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as the white whale’s
talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch by night, wondering
whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun’s disks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes’ summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now pausing.
“There’s something
ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and all other grand and lofty
things; look here,—three peaks as proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is
Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious
fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the
image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician’s glass, to each and every
man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains
for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now
this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms,
the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at
Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, ’tis fit that man
should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here’s stout stuff for
woe to work on. So be it, then.”
“No fairy fingers can
have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must have left their mouldings there
since yesterday,” murmured Starbuck to himself, leaning against the
bulwarks. “The old man seems to read Belshazzar’s awful writing. I have
never marked the coin inspectingly. He goes below; let me read. A dark valley
between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in
some faint earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and
over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope.
If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil; but if we lift
them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great
sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace
from him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly,
but still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely.”
“There now’s the old
Mogul,” soliloquized Stubb by the try-works, “he’s been twigging it; and there
goes Starbuck from the same, and both with faces which I should say might be
somewhere within nine fathoms long. And all from looking at a piece of gold,
which did I have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer’s Hook, I’d not look
at it very long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I
regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your
doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your
doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of gold moidores
and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What then should there
be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda!
let me read it once. Halloa! here’s signs and wonders truly! That, now, is what
old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanack below calls
ditto. I’ll get the almanack; and as I have heard devils can be raised with
Daboll’s arithmetic, I’ll try my hand at raising a meaning out of these queer
curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar. Here’s the book. Let’s see now.
Signs and wonders; and the sun, he’s always among ’em. Hem, hem, hem; here they
are—here they go—all alive:—Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull and Jimini!
here’s Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels among ’em. Aye,
here on the coin he’s just crossing the threshold between two of twelve
sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must
know your places. You’ll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in
to supply the thoughts. That’s my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts
calendar, and Bowditch’s navigator, and Daboll’s arithmetic go. Signs and
wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in
wonders! There’s a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist—hark! By Jove, I have it!
Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter;
and now I’ll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin:
there’s Aries, or the Ram—lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the
Bull—he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins—that is, Virtue and
Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us
back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path—he
gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo,
the Virgin! that’s our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when
pop comes Libra, or the Scales—happiness weighed and found wanting; and while
we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the
Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the
arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck
out the shafts, stand aside! here’s the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the
Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius,
or the Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up
with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There’s a sermon now, writ in high
heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all
alive and hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and
so, alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly’s the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon!
But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and
let’s hear what he’ll have to say. There; he’s before it; he’ll out with
something presently. So, so; he’s beginning.”
“I see nothing here,
but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises a certain whale, this round
thing belongs to him. So, what’s all this staring been about? It is worth
sixteen dollars, that’s true; and at two cents the cigar, that’s nine
hundred and sixty cigars. I won’t smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like
cigars, and here’s nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft
to spy ’em out.”
“Shall I call that wise
or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it
be really foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast;
here comes our old Manxman—the old hearse-driver, he must have been, that is,
before he took to the sea. He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes
round on the other side of the mast; why, there’s a horse-shoe nailed on that
side; and now he’s back again; what does that mean? Hark! he’s muttering—voice
like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!”
“If the White Whale be
raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of
these signs. I’ve studied signs, and know their marks; they were taught me two
score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun
then be? The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And
what’s the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign—the roaring and
devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee.”
“There’s another
rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in one kind of world, you
see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg—all tattooing—looks like the signs of the
Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live he’s comparing notes; looking
at his thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the
bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in the back
country. And by Jove, he’s found something there in the vicinity of his thigh—I
guess it’s Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don’t know what to make of the
doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king’s trowsers. But, aside
again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight as
usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that
look of his? Ah, only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a sun
on the coin—fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way comes
Pip—poor boy! would he had died, or I; he’s half horrible to me. He too has
been watching all of these interpreters—myself included—and look now, he comes
to read, with that unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and hear him. Hark!”
“I look, you look, he
looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Upon my soul, he’s been
studying Murray’s Grammar! Improving his mind, poor fellow! But what’s that he
says now—hist!”
“I look, you look, he
looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Why, he’s getting it
by heart—hist! again.”
“I look, you look, he
looks; we look, ye look, they look.”
“Well, that’s funny.”
“And I, you, and he;
and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I’m a crow, especially when I stand
a’top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain’t I a crow? And
where’s the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old
trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves of an old jacket.”
“Wonder if he means
me?—complimentary!—poor lad!—I could go hang myself. Any way, for the present,
I’ll quit Pip’s vicinity. I can stand the rest, for they have plain wits; but
he’s too crazy-witty for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering.”
“Here’s the ship’s
navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire to unscrew it. But,
unscrew your navel, and what’s the consequence? Then again, if it stays here,
that is ugly, too, for when aught’s nailed to the mast it’s a sign that things
grow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he’ll nail ye! This is a
pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and
found a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey’s wedding ring. How
did it get there? And so they’ll say in the resurrection, when they come to
fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters
for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious gold!—the green
miser’ll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes ’mong the worlds blackberrying.
Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and
get your hoe-cake done!"
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