“Nay, keep it thyself,” cried Gabriel to Ahab; “thou art soon going that way.”

“Curses throttle thee!” yelled Ahab.  “Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive it”; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the boat.  But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat drifted a little towards the ship’s stern; so that, as if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel’s eager hand.  He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship.  It fell at Ahab’s feet.  Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair.

CHAPTER 72

The Monkey-Rope

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew.  Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there.  There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere.  It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene.  We must now retrace our way a little.  It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates.  But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole?  It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to.  But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole tensing or stripping operation is concluded.  The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon.  So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him.  On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—­ a shirt and socks—­in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen.

Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back.  You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord.  Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.