As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked1 in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice2 hereby done to us hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous3 to establish the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan4 society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation5 of the naval6 officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm7 Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed preeminently presuming and ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation8 amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively9 engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest10 badge have been all Martial11 Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And as for the matter of the alleged12 uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated13 into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly14 plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion15 of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the idea of peril16 so much enhances the popular conceit17 of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil18 at the apparition19 of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies20 the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
But, though the world scouts21 at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage22; yea, an all-abounding adoration23! for almost all the tapers24, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines25, to our glory!
But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.
Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties26 upwards27 of 1,000,000 pounds? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels28; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 00824,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, 20,000,000 dollars; and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of 00847,000,000 dollars. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant29 in whaling?
But this is not the half; look again.
I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate30, than the high and mighty31 business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten32 events so remarkable33 in themselves, and so continuously momentous34 in their sequential issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cooke or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage35 harbors, let them fire salutes36 to the honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages37. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cookes, Your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous38 Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater, than your Cooke and your Krusenstern. For in their succorless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin39 islands, battled with virgin40 wonders and terrors that Cooke with all his marines and muskets41 would not willingly have willingly dared. All that is made such a flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the life-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's common log. Ah, the world! Oh, the world!
Until the whale fishery rounded Cape42 Horn, no commerce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse43 but colonial, was carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whalemen who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching44 those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili45, and Bolivia from the yoke46 of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships, long shunned47 those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy48 of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants49 were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent50 biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles51 of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary52 and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive53 missionaries54 to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable55, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically56 noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say.
The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job? And who composed the first narrative57 of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy58 in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins59.
No good blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers--all kith and kin60 to noble Benjamin-- this day darting61 the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable.
Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale is declared "a royal fish."
Oh, that's only nominal62! The whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing63 way.
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous64 object in the cymballed procession.*
*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
Grant it, since you cite it; but say what you will, there is no real dignity in whaling.
No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest65. Cetus is a constellation66 in the South! No more! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in his lifetime has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity67 who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably68 ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone69; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors70, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively71 ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
1 embarked | |
乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 ); 装载; 从事 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 injustice | |
n.非正义,不公正,不公平,侵犯(别人的)权利 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 superfluous | |
adj.过多的,过剩的,多余的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 metropolitan | |
adj.大城市的,大都会的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 emulation | |
n.竞争;仿效 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 naval | |
adj.海军的,军舰的,船的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 sperm | |
n.精子,精液 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 vocation | |
n.职业,行业 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 actively | |
adv.积极地,勤奋地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 bloodiest | |
adj.血污的( bloody的最高级 );流血的;屠杀的;残忍的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 martial | |
adj.战争的,军事的,尚武的,威武的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 alleged | |
a.被指控的,嫌疑的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 initiated | |
n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始,创始,启蒙,介绍加入 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 triumphantly | |
ad.得意洋洋地;得胜地;成功地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 carrion | |
n.腐肉 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 peril | |
n.(严重的)危险;危险的事物 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 conceit | |
n.自负,自高自大 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 recoil | |
vi.退却,退缩,畏缩 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 apparition | |
n.幽灵,神奇的现象 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 eddies | |
(水、烟等的)漩涡,涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 scouts | |
侦察员[机,舰]( scout的名词复数 ); 童子军; 搜索; 童子军成员 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 homage | |
n.尊敬,敬意,崇敬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 adoration | |
n.爱慕,崇拜 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 tapers | |
(长形物体的)逐渐变窄( taper的名词复数 ); 微弱的光; 极细的蜡烛 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 shrines | |
圣地,圣坛,神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 bounties | |
(由政府提供的)奖金( bounty的名词复数 ); 赏金; 慷慨; 大方 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 upwards | |
adv.向上,在更高处...以上 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 vessels | |
n.血管( vessel的名词复数 );船;容器;(具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的)人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 puissant | |
adj.强有力的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 aggregate | |
adj.总计的,集合的;n.总数;v.合计;集合 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 begotten | |
v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 );产生,引起 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 momentous | |
adj.重要的,重大的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 salutes | |
n.致敬,欢迎,敬礼( salute的名词复数 )v.欢迎,致敬( salute的第三人称单数 );赞扬,赞颂 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 anonymous | |
adj.无名的;匿名的;无特色的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 javelin | |
n.标枪,投枪 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 virgin | |
n.处女,未婚女子;adj.未经使用的;未经开发的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 muskets | |
n.火枪,(尤指)滑膛枪( musket的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 cape | |
n.海角,岬;披肩,短披风 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 intercourse | |
n.性交;交流,交往,交际 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 touching | |
adj.动人的,使人感伤的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 chili | |
n.辣椒 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 yoke | |
n.轭;支配;v.给...上轭,连接,使成配偶 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 shunned | |
v.避开,回避,避免( shun的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 infancy | |
n.婴儿期;幼年期;初期 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 emigrants | |
n.(从本国移往他国的)移民( emigrant的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 benevolent | |
adj.仁慈的,乐善好施的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 isles | |
岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 missionary | |
adj.教会的,传教(士)的;n.传教士 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 missionaries | |
n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 hospitable | |
adj.好客的;宽容的;有利的,适宜的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 aesthetically | |
adv.美地,艺术地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 narrative | |
n.叙述,故事;adj.叙事的,故事体的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 eulogy | |
n.颂词;颂扬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 veins | |
n.纹理;矿脉( vein的名词复数 );静脉;叶脉;纹理 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 kin | |
n.家族,亲属,血缘关系;adj.亲属关系的,同类的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 darting | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的现在分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62 nominal | |
adj.名义上的;(金额、租金)微不足道的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63 imposing | |
adj.使人难忘的,壮丽的,堂皇的,雄伟的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64 conspicuous | |
adj.明眼的,惹人注目的;炫耀的,摆阔气的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65 attest | |
vt.证明,证实;表明 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66 constellation | |
n.星座n.灿烂的一群 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67 antiquity | |
n.古老;高龄;古物,古迹 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
68 unreasonably | |
adv. 不合理地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
69 undone | |
a.未做完的,未完成的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
70 creditors | |
n.债权人,债主( creditor的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
71 prospectively | |
adv.预期; 前瞻性; 潜在; 可能 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |