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| Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?—Water—there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all. Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,—though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board—yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content. Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition! Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this: “Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. “WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. “BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.” Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. |
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| CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag. I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday. As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original—the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones—so goes the story—to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit? Now having a night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don’t be too particular. With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of “The Crossed Harpoons”—but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,—rather weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don’t you hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns. Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But “The Crossed Harpoons,” and “The Sword-Fish?”—this, then must needs be the sign of “The Trap.” However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door. It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘The Trap!’ Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath—“The Spouter Inn:—Peter Coffin.” Coffin?—Spouter?—Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee. It was a queer sort of place—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. “In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—“it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier.” True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals. But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost? Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans. But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this “Spouter” may be. CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn. Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself? In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads. The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away with by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump. Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way—cut through what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all round—you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft’s cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den—the bar—a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without—within, the villanous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads’ goblets. Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny; to this a penny more; and so on to the full glass—the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a shilling. Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of skrimshander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full—not a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose you are goin’ a-whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.” I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man’s blanket. “I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?—you want supper? Supper’ll be ready directly.” I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but he didn’t make much headway, I thought. At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland—no fire at all—the landlord said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind—not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner. “My boy,” said the landlord, “you’ll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty.” “Landlord,” I whispered, “that aint the harpooneer is it?” “Oh, no,” said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don’t—he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes ’em rare.” “The devil he does,” says I. “Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?” “He’ll be here afore long,” was the answer. I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this “dark complexioned” harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed before I did. Supper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, “That’s the Grampus’s crew. I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years’ voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we’ll have the latest news from the Feegees.” A tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale’s mouth—the bar—when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island. The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously. I observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of “Bulkington! Bulkington! where’s Bulkington?” and darted out of the house in pursuit of him. It was now about nine o’clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seamen. No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother. I don’t know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin. The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight—how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming? “Landlord! I’ve changed my mind about that harpooneer.—I shan’t sleep with him. I’ll try the bench here.” “Just as you please; I’m sorry I can’t spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and it’s a plaguy rough board here”—feeling of the knots and notches. “But wait a bit, Skrimshander; I’ve got a carpenter’s plane there in the bar—wait, I say, and I’ll make ye snug enough.” So saying he procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven’s sake to quit—the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study. I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one—so there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night. The devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn’t I steal a march on him—bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me down! Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person’s bed, I began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I’ll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long. I’ll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows after all—there’s no telling. But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer. “Landlord!” said I, “what sort of a chap is he—does he always keep such late hours?” It was now hard upon twelve o’clock. The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. “No,” he answered, “generally he’s an early bird—airley to bed and airley to rise—yes, he’s the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don’t see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can’t sell his head.” “Can’t sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?” getting into a towering rage. “Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?” “That’s precisely it,” said the landlord, “and I told him he couldn’t sell it here, the market’s overstocked.” “With what?” shouted I. “With heads to be sure; ain’t there too many heads in the world?” “I tell you what it is, landlord,” said I quite calmly, “you’d better stop spinning that yarn to me—I’m not green.” “May be not,” taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, “but I rayther guess you’ll be done brown if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin’ his head.” “I’ll break it for him,” said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord’s. “It’s broke a’ready,” said he. “Broke,” said I—“broke, do you mean?” “Sartain, and that’s the very reason he can’t sell it, I guess.” “Landlord,” said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-storm—“landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow—a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I’ve no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself liable to a criminal prosecution.” “Wall,” said the landlord, fetching a long breath, “that’s a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin’ you of has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of ’balmed New Zealand heads (great curios, you know), and he’s sold all on ’em but one, and that one he’s trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow’s Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin’ human heads about the streets when folks is goin’ to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin’ out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions.” This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me—but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead idolators? “Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.” “He pays reg’lar,” was the rejoinder. “But come, it’s getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes—it’s a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There’s plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed; it’s an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn’t do. Come along here, I’ll give ye a glim in a jiffy;” and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, he exclaimed “I vum it’s Sunday—you won’t see that harpooneer to-night; he’s come to anchor somewhere—come along then; do come; won’t ye come?” I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast. “There,” said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; “there, make yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye.” I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared. Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a large seaman’s bag, containing the harpooneer’s wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed. But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck. I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on the bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer’s not coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven. Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door. Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time while employed in unlacing the bag’s mouth. This accomplished, however, he turned round—when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large blackish looking squares. Yes, it’s just as I thought, he’s a terrible bedfellow; he’s been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man—a whaleman too—who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all! It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun’s tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head—a ghastly thing enough—and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his hat—a new beaver hat—when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head—none to speak of at least—nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner. Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed inexplicable in him. Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years’ War, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too—perhaps the heads of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine—heavens! look at that tomahawk! But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days’ old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime—to see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. All these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound. But the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me. Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning. “Who-e debel you?”—he at last said—“you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e.” And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark. “Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!” “Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!” again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him. “Don’t be afraid now,” said he, grinning again, “Queequeg here wouldn’t harm a hair of your head.” “Stop your grinning,” shouted I, “and why didn’t you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?” “I thought ye know’d it;—didn’t I tell ye, he was a peddlin’ heads around town?—but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here—you sabbee me, I sabbee—you this man sleepe you—you sabbee?” “Me sabbee plenty”—grunted Queequeg, puffing away at his pipe and sitting up in bed. “You gettee in,” he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal. What’s all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to myself—the man’s a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. “Landlord,” said I, “tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don’t fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It’s dangerous. Besides, I ain’t insured.” This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned me to get into bed—rolling over to one side as much as to say—“I won’t touch a leg of ye.” “Good night, landlord,” said I, “you may go.” I turned in, and never slept better in my life. CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane. Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me. My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets. I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse and worse—at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my stockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good slippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from it—half steeped in dreams—I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it. Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg’s pagan arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night’s events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse him—“Queequeg!”—but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! “Queequeg!—in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don’t see every day, he and his ways were well worth unusual regarding. He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one, by the by, and then—still minus his trowsers—he hunted up his boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to crush himself—boots in hand, and hat on—under the bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition stage—neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones—probably not made to order either—rather pinched and tormented him at the first go off of a bitter cold morning. Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He complied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the morning any Christian would have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my amazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers’s best cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept. The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his harpoon like a marshal’s baton. |
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| CHAPTER 5. Breakfast. I quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my bedfellow. However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for. The bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns. You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This young fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone. “Grub, ho!” now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast. They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though: Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo’s performances—this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere. These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen! But as for Queequeg—why, Queequeg sat there among them—at the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly. We will not speak of all Queequeg’s peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll. CHAPTER 6. The Street. If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford. In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou’-wester and a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one—I mean a downright bumpkin dandy—a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest. But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country? Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that? In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles. In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples—long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation’s final day. And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands. CHAPTER 7. The Chapel. In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman’s Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not. Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors’ wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:— SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats’ crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August 3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW. Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say—here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems—aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling—a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot. CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit. I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he was a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom—the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February’s snow. No one having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner; when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit. Like most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the main-top of his vessel. The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec. I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing stronghold—a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within the walls. But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place, borrowed from the chaplain’s former sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel’s face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the ship’s tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into the Victory’s plank where Nelson fell. “Ah, noble ship,” the angel seemed to say, “beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off—serenest azure is at hand.” Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak. What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow. CHAPTER 9. The Sermon. Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. “Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard—larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!” There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women’s shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher. He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog—in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy— “The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom. “I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell— Oh, I was plunging to despair. “In black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints— No more the whale did me confine. “With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God. “My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and the power.” Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, said: “Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah—‘And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.’” “Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters—four yarns—is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sealine sound! what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish’s belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God—never mind now what that command was, or how conveyed—which he found a hard command. But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do—remember that—and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. “With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that’s bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That’s the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,—no friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger’s evil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other—“Jack, he’s robbed a widow;” or, “Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist;” or, “Harry lad, I guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom.” Another runs to read the bill that’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into the cabin. “‘Who’s there?’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the Customs—‘Who’s there?’ Oh! how that harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. ‘I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?’ Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. ‘We sail with the next coming tide,’ at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. ‘No sooner, sir?’—‘Soon enough for any honest man that goes a passenger.’ Ha! Jonah, that’s another stab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. ‘I’ll sail with ye,’—he says,—‘the passage money how much is that?—I’ll pay now.’ For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, ‘that he paid the fare thereof’ ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context, this is full of meaning. “Now Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah’s Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah’s purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it’s assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage. ‘Point out my state-room, Sir,’ says Jonah now, ‘I’m travel-weary; I need sleep.’ ‘Thou lookest like it,’ says the Captain, ‘there’s thy room.’ Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of convicts’ cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship’s water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels’ wards. “Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!’ he groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!’ “Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there’s naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah’s prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. “And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah’s head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship—a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, ‘What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!’ Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep. “Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah’s; that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their questions. ‘What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him. “‘I am a Hebrew,’ he cries—and then—‘I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!’ Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts,—when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah. “And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah.” While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah’s sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them. There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself. But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these words: “Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along ‘into the midst of the seas,’ where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and ‘the weeds were wrapped about his head,’ and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet—‘out of the belly of hell’—when the whale grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and ‘vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;’ when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten—his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean—Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it! “This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!” He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,—“But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?” He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the place. CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend. Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way. But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited. With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed. Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have “broken his digester.” As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented. We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us. If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply. After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room together. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers’ pockets. I let them stay. He then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed the paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise. I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?—to do the will of God—that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat. How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair. CHAPTER 11. Nightgown. We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future. Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether by day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o’clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp. Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island; and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give. CHAPTER 12. Biographical. Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling; even then, in Queequeg’s ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth. A Sag Harbor ship visited his father’s bay, and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces. In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage—this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain’s cabin. They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan. And thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians, wore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time from home. By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre now. I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen. His story being ended with his pipe’s last dying puff, Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping. CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow. Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade’s bill; using, however, my comrade’s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied with. We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg’s canvas sack and hammock, away we went down to “the Moss,” the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much—for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,—but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers’ meadows armed with their own scythes—though in no wise obliged to furnish them—even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon. Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing—though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the barrow—Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. “Why,” said I, “Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would think. Didn’t the people laugh?” Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commander—from all accounts, a very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain—this commander was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg’s sister, a pretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride’s bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honor, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the King, Queequeg’s father. Grace being said,—for those people have their grace as well as we—though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts—Grace, I say, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself—being Captain of a ship—as having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King’s own house—the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;—taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. “Now,” said Queequeg, “what you tink now?—Didn’t our people laugh?” At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort. Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned that turnpike earth!—that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records. At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; as though a white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the bumpkin’s hour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the air; then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff. “Capting! Capting!” yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer; “Capting, Capting, here’s the devil.” “Hallo, you sir,” cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking up to Queequeg, “what in thunder do you mean by that? Don’t you know you might have killed that chap?” “What him say?” said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me. “He say,” said I, “that you came near kill-e that man there,” pointing to the still shivering greenhorn. “Kill-e,” cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly expression of disdain, “ah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!” “Look you,” roared the Captain, “I’ll kill-e you, you cannibal, if you try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.” But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters. Nothing |
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| CHAPTER 19. The Prophet. “Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?” Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up. “Have ye shipped in her?” he repeated. “You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,” said I, trying to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him. “Aye, the Pequod—that ship there,” he said, drawing back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object. “Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.” “Anything down there about your souls?” “About what?” “Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,” he said quickly. “No matter though, I know many chaps that hav’n’t got any,—good luck to ’em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.” “What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I. “He’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other chaps,” abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he. “Queequeg,” said I, “let’s go; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere; he’s talking about something and somebody we don’t know.” “Stop!” cried the stranger. “Ye said true—ye hav’n’t seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?” “Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner. “Captain Ahab.” “What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?” “Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav’n’t seen him yet, have ye?” “No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long.” “All right again before long!” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before.” “What do you know about him?” “What did they tell you about him? Say that!” “They didn’t tell much of anything about him; only I’ve heard that he’s a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.” “That’s true, that’s true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that’s the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn’t ye hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don’t think ye did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that every one knows a’most—I mean they know he’s only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off.” “My friend,” said I, “what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don’t know, and I don’t much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg.” “All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?” “Pretty sure.” With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and said:—“Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all. Anyhow, it’s all fixed and arranged a’ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity ’em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I stopped ye.” “Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game; that’s all I have to say.” “And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are just the man for him—the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded not to make one of ’em.” “Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way—you can’t fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.” “Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.” “Morning it is,” said I. “Come along, Queequeg, let’s leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?” “Elijah.” Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things. I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug. CHAPTER 20. All Astir. A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened that the ship’s preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall. On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word was given at all the inns where the ship’s company were stopping, that their chests must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped. Every one knows what a multitude of things—beds, sauce-pans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which necessitates a three-years’ housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicate ship. At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things, both large and small. Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad’s sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward’s pantry; another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate’s desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one’s rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity—Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars. But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam. During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start. CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard. It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf. “There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,” said I to Queequeg, “it can’t be shadows; she’s off by sunrise, I guess; come on!” “Avast!” cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah. “Going aboard?” “Hands off, will you,” said I. “Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go ’way!” “Ain’t going aboard, then?” “Yes, we are,” said I, “but what business is that of yours? Do you know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?” “No, no, no; I wasn’t aware of that,” said Elijah, slowly and wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable glances. “Elijah,” said I, “you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be detained.” “Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?” “He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “come on.” “Holloa!” cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a few paces. “Never mind him,” said I, “Queequeg, come on.” But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder, said—“Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that ship a while ago?” Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, “Yes, I thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure.” “Very dim, very dim,” said Elijah. “Morning to ye.” Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and touching my shoulder again, said, “See if you can find ’em now, will ye? “Find who?” “Morning to ye! morning to ye!” he rejoined, again moving off. “Oh! I was going to warn ye against—but never mind, never mind—it’s all one, all in the family too;—sharp frost this morning, ain’t it? Good-bye to ye. Shan’t see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it’s before the Grand Jury.” And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence. At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept upon him. “Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?” said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter, were it not for Elijah’s otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body; telling him to establish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper’s rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado, sat quietly down there. “Gracious! Queequeg, don’t sit there,” said I. “Oh! perry dood seat,” said Queequeg, “my country way; won’t hurt him face.” “Face!” said I, “call that his face? very benevolent countenance then; but how hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you are heavy, it’s grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look, he’ll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don’t wake.” Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place. While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper’s head. “What’s that for, Queequeg?” “Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!” He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong vapor now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then seemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Holloa!” he breathed at last, “who be ye smokers?” “Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?” “Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain came aboard last night.” “What Captain?—Ahab?” “Who but him indeed?” I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck. “Holloa! Starbuck’s astir,” said the rigger. “He’s a lively chief mate, that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to.” And so saying he went on deck, and we followed. It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin. CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas. At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift—a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward—after all this, the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said: “Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab is all ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from shore, eh? Well, call all hands, then. Muster ’em aft here—blast ’em!” “No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,” said Bildad, “but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.” How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, but the pilot’s; and as he was not yet completely recovered—so they said—therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant service many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends, before they quit the ship for good with the pilot. But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad. “Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,” he cried, as the sailors lingered at the main-mast. “Mr. Starbuck, drive ’em aft.” “Strike the tent there!”—was the next order. As I hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor. “Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!—jump!”—was the next command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes. Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots of the port—he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft—Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed on board the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman’s berth. Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick. “Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?” he roared. “Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don’t ye spring, I say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!” And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day. At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows. Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard,— “Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.” Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer. At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside. It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage—beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,—poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, “Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can.” As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck—now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate. But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about him,—“Captain Bildad—come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful, careful!—come, Bildad, boy—say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck—luck to ye, Mr. Stubb—luck to ye, Mr. Flask—good-bye and good luck to ye all—and this day three years I’ll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!” “God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men,” murmured old Bildad, almost incoherently. “I hope ye’ll have fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye—a pleasant sun is all he needs, and ye’ll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don’t stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent. within the year. Don’t forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! Don’t whale it too much a’ Lord’s days, men; but don’t miss a fair chance either, that’s rejecting Heaven’s good gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye, good-bye! Don’t keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it’ll spoil. Be careful with the butter—twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye, if—” “Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,—away!” and with that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat. Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic. CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore. Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn. When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe! Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! CHAPTER 24. The Advocate. As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked 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 injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales. In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous 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 metropolitan 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 emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous. Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly 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 carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier’s profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale’s vast tail, fanning into eddies 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 scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, 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 bounties upwards of £1,000,000? 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 vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant 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 aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous 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 Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would not willingly have 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 Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke 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 shunned 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 infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, 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 æsthetically 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 narrative 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 eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke! True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins. 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 kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting 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 nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing 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 conspicuous 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 attest. Cetus is a constellation 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 antiquity 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 unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. CHAPTER 25. Postscript. In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy? It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t amount to much in his totality. But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils? Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff! CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires. The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. “Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall ere long see what that word “careful” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother? With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man. But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality! If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman’s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God! CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires. Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner. What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth. I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb’s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent. The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a three years’ voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpenter’s nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those battering seas. Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the Pequod’s boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the Pequod’s harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged. First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known. Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding eyes—for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression—all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate’s squire. Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip—he never did—oh, no! he went before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there! CHAPTER 28. Ahab. For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin. Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness—to call it so—which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and they were every one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck. There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego’s senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out—which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered—then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole. So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,” said the old Gay-Head Indian once; “but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of ’em.” I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod’s quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon. Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling |
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| CHAPTER 19. The Prophet. “Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?” Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up. “Have ye shipped in her?” he repeated. “You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,” said I, trying to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him. “Aye, the Pequod—that ship there,” he said, drawing back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object. “Yes,” said I, “we have just signed the articles.” “Anything down there about your souls?” “About what?” “Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,” he said quickly. “No matter though, I know many chaps that hav’n’t got any,—good luck to ’em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.” “What are you jabbering about, shipmate?” said I. “He’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other chaps,” abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he. “Queequeg,” said I, “let’s go; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere; he’s talking about something and somebody we don’t know.” “Stop!” cried the stranger. “Ye said true—ye hav’n’t seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?” “Who’s Old Thunder?” said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner. “Captain Ahab.” “What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?” “Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav’n’t seen him yet, have ye?” “No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long.” “All right again before long!” laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. “Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before.” “What do you know about him?” “What did they tell you about him? Say that!” “They didn’t tell much of anything about him; only I’ve heard that he’s a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.” “That’s true, that’s true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that’s the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn’t ye hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don’t think ye did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that every one knows a’most—I mean they know he’s only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off.” “My friend,” said I, “what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don’t know, and I don’t much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg.” “All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?” “Pretty sure.” With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and said:—“Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all. Anyhow, it’s all fixed and arranged a’ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity ’em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I stopped ye.” “Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game; that’s all I have to say.” “And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are just the man for him—the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh! when ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded not to make one of ’em.” “Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way—you can’t fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.” “Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.” “Morning it is,” said I. “Come along, Queequeg, let’s leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?” “Elijah.” Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things. I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug. CHAPTER 20. All Astir. A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened that the ship’s preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall. On the day following Queequeg’s signing the articles, word was given at all the inns where the ship’s company were stopping, that their chests must be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully equipped. Every one knows what a multitude of things—beds, sauce-pans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which necessitates a three-years’ housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain and duplicate ship. At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends of things, both large and small. Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad’s sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward’s pantry; another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate’s desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one’s rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity—Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort, and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars. But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam. During these days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and as often I asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected aboard every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start. CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard. It was nearly six o’clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf. “There are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,” said I to Queequeg, “it can’t be shadows; she’s off by sunrise, I guess; come on!” “Avast!” cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It was Elijah. “Going aboard?” “Hands off, will you,” said I. “Lookee here,” said Queequeg, shaking himself, “go ’way!” “Ain’t going aboard, then?” “Yes, we are,” said I, “but what business is that of yours? Do you know, Mr. Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent?” “No, no, no; I wasn’t aware of that,” said Elijah, slowly and wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most unaccountable glances. “Elijah,” said I, “you will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be detained.” “Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?” “He’s cracked, Queequeg,” said I, “come on.” “Holloa!” cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a few paces. “Never mind him,” said I, “Queequeg, come on.” But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder, said—“Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that ship a while ago?” Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, “Yes, I thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure.” “Very dim, very dim,” said Elijah. “Morning to ye.” Once more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and touching my shoulder again, said, “See if you can find ’em now, will ye? “Find who?” “Morning to ye! morning to ye!” he rejoined, again moving off. “Oh! I was going to warn ye against—but never mind, never mind—it’s all one, all in the family too;—sharp frost this morning, ain’t it? Good-bye to ye. Shan’t see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it’s before the Grand Jury.” And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence. At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept upon him. “Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to?” said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter, were it not for Elijah’s otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had best sit up with the body; telling him to establish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper’s rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado, sat quietly down there. “Gracious! Queequeg, don’t sit there,” said I. “Oh! perry dood seat,” said Queequeg, “my country way; won’t hurt him face.” “Face!” said I, “call that his face? very benevolent countenance then; but how hard he breathes, he’s heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you are heavy, it’s grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look, he’ll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don’t wake.” Queequeg removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place. While narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper’s head. “What’s that for, Queequeg?” “Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!” He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong vapor now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then seemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Holloa!” he breathed at last, “who be ye smokers?” “Shipped men,” answered I, “when does she sail?” “Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain came aboard last night.” “What Captain?—Ahab?” “Who but him indeed?” I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck. “Holloa! Starbuck’s astir,” said the rigger. “He’s a lively chief mate, that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to.” And so saying he went on deck, and we followed. It was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board. Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin. CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas. At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with her last gift—a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate, her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward—after all this, the two Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief mate, Peleg said: “Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Ahab is all ready—just spoke to him—nothing more to be got from shore, eh? Well, call all hands, then. Muster ’em aft here—blast ’em!” “No need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg,” said Bildad, “but away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.” How now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on the quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, but the pilot’s; and as he was not yet completely recovered—so they said—therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural enough; especially as in the merchant service many captains never show themselves on deck for a considerable time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends, before they quit the ship for good with the pilot. But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad. “Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,” he cried, as the sailors lingered at the main-mast. “Mr. Starbuck, drive ’em aft.” “Strike the tent there!”—was the next order. As I hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor. “Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!—jump!”—was the next command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes. Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed pilots of the port—he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft—Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed on board the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman’s berth. Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first kick. “Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?” he roared. “Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don’t ye spring, I say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!” And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day. At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows. Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard,— “Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.” Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer. At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging alongside. It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet; very loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage—beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,—poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, “Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can.” As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck—now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate. But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about him,—“Captain Bildad—come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful, careful!—come, Bildad, boy—say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck—luck to ye, Mr. Stubb—luck to ye, Mr. Flask—good-bye and good luck to ye all—and this day three years I’ll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away!” “God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men,” murmured old Bildad, almost incoherently. “I hope ye’ll have fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye—a pleasant sun is all he needs, and ye’ll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. Don’t stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent. within the year. Don’t forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don’t waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! Don’t whale it too much a’ Lord’s days, men; but don’t miss a fair chance either, that’s rejecting Heaven’s good gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye, good-bye! Don’t keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it’ll spoil. Be careful with the butter—twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye, if—” “Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,—away!” and with that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat. Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic. CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore. Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn. When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe! Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! CHAPTER 24. The Advocate. As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked 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 injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales. In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous 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 metropolitan 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 emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous. Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly 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 carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier’s profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale’s vast tail, fanning into eddies 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 scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, 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 bounties upwards of £1,000,000? 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 vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant 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 aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous 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 Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would not willingly have 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 Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke 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 shunned 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 infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, 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 æsthetically 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 narrative 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 eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke! True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins. 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 kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting 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 nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any grand imposing 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 conspicuous 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 attest. Cetus is a constellation 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 antiquity 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 unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. CHAPTER 25. Postscript. In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy? It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt, precisely—who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can’t amount to much in his totality. But the only thing to be considered here, is this—what kind of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils? Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff! CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires. The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. “Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery.” But we shall ere long see what that word “careful” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father’s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother? With memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man. But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck’s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality! If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman’s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O God! CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires. Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner. What, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs; what helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth. I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb’s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent. The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a three years’ voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpenter’s nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those battering seas. Now these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the Pequod’s boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the Pequod’s harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged. First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known. Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding eyes—for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression—all this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate’s squire. Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip—he never did—oh, no! he went before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there! CHAPTER 28. Ahab. For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin. Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness—to call it so—which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and they were every one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck. There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego’s senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out—which might hardly come to pass, so he muttered—then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole. So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. “Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,” said the old Gay-Head Indian once; “but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of ’em.” I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod’s quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon. Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling |
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| Transcript (video above) - Hi All. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, June 17th, 2021. And you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today: CupixWorks 2.O versus Matterport for Construction Professionals. And here to talk to us about it is Gannon Wilder, Product Manager for Cupix. Hey Gannon, good to see. - Hey Dan, thanks for having me. - Gannon, how about we jump in immediately with a demo that shows CupixWorks BIM versus actual. - Yeah, well essentially what Cupix does is, we enable you to take the small 360 cameras, walk around in a variety of different modes to capture a site. So we have a lot of unique algorithms of how we're capturing and processing the data. - Awesome, Gannon, let's cover that. But let's first do the show so we can see what it actually looks like and then we'll talk about how you capture it and the magic. Cupix got so much magic just on this one screen of being able to show a BIM model versus a Google Street View-like experience that I think that's the place for us to begin. And then we'll talk about how you do this magic. - Yeah, okay then, we have a lot of stuff to show today, but one of the powerful features we built within CupixWorks is the ability to align your virtual floor within a BIM environment. And so this is a fully navigable space. It's not just a rendering of the model. You actually have the entire live model built in. So as you navigate the space you can see the overlay of duck work and built walls. Just like in BIM, you have a variety of layers turned on. So this one I think is actually without the interior wall layer, but this essentially lets you compare as-built documentations at a certain point in time with the design model. - Anything that you can do in a BIM model can be turned on and off? So if you want to look at Mechanical, Electrical Plumbing , you can do that in your BIM model within the CupixWorks player. - Yes. So you're going to upload it -- an entire full BIM model -- and then as you are going to turn on or off layers to be able to see specific areas you're interested in. - Okay, and then what we're looking at on the left side is the actual 3D tour. So if you're actually walking through this space that's been captured in a point in time. - Exactly and you're able to capture by video by walking through the site or in more traditional methods of where you stop, take a 360 panorama and move forward and we're able to track the position within it. - Okay, could we walk a little bit more through the space? And it just automatically syncs to the BIM? - Yeah, as you can see we're just moving through the facility. - Awesome! Talk to me about the map that we're looking at, the floor plan, the 2D floor plan in the bottom left, please. - Yes. Within CupixWorks the viewer is built for managing any variety of projects. So we actually can filter by layers and the specific project, we have just a single layer but if you have a multi-floor building, this drops down and you can actually see multiple levels. So you can easily pop between different levels of your plan and then also easily track your position within that layer. - So can I walk through this space by clicking on the floor plan on the bottom left? - Yes. As you see, I can click and navigate in completely different areas as you're moving around. Every single 360 panorama is oriented within full six degrees of freedom within the 3D space. So within the 2D model or 2D plan and also like the BIM model. - So you can click anywhere there was a 360 Panorama that was shot or just click on the actual space to walk through it. - Correct. - Okay. I think I see some annotations in the space. Can you point out what we're looking at on the left side? - Yes. I can just turn on that view to see more detail of it. Yes. You're able to track issues, RFI tasks within the space and they're all tracked. You can see I'm spatially on the map with you. So you can see where different areas are tagged and you can go, actually navigate to that specific area. You can also see it from the list view and navigate from the list. And just while we're here, we can note that we do have several integrations with Procore, PlanGrid and BIM 360. So you can also pull data or push data from these systems and track it spatially where it's located on a 2D map. - So, there's a seamless integration with, I think I heard PlanGrid, Procore. Was there another one? - PlanGrid, Procore and then BIM 360. - And BIM 360. So if the architects, engineers, general contractors building owners -- if they're using any of those existing platforms -- they seamlessly integrate with CupixWorks? - Correct and really, the power that we enable is, we're not primarily an issue tracking system. We give you the ability to spatially contextualize these issues on your site. So instead of only just looking at a 2D map floor plan, or just a static image, you can go to the issue, click on the issue, open it up, navigate fully around that environment to understand this issue. And we also give the capability to track what's been going on with this issue over time, because people are typically scanning -- maybe on a weekly basis -- maybe every two weeks or once a month. We have a list of multiple times this site is captured. If I can't quite figure out what's going on in this photo, I can maybe go to the month before and automatically notice the transition was not in the same spot exactly. It's maybe five feet away from each other, but we automatically can detect the nearest pano to your location. - A pano being a panorama 360 photo. - Correct, yes, 360 imagery. - So, could you give us a comparison of weekly construction documentation? In my mind, I'm thinking about a 25-story, 500,000 SQ FT office building that needs renovation. We're doing --- a potential client is considering either CupixWorks or Matterport to shoot weekly construction documentation and take advantage of the platform's features. Could we look at a weekly construction documentation comparison? - Yeah, definitely. So beyond being able to just navigate within a single view to different points within the timeline to see progress. You can actually see them compared side-by-side. And as I mentioned before, we automatically find and detect where the nearest imagery is. So the capture locations may not -- you don't have to manually sync them between dates. You just capture the entire floor on one day, capture the entire floor on the second date and others are able to sync together. - Okay. So it may be hard for our viewers to see the label in the bottom/middle but that is a date of when the CupixWorks 3D tour was taken and then another date of the same space. So this would be an example of maybe either comparing weekly construction or monthly construction documentation? - Correct and it enables you to track progress of a specific location throughout your entire site and it gives you that archival and contextual awareness throughout the entire project. - Okay, awesome. So forgive me, I interrupted you at the beginning of the show. You were starting to talk about how imagery is captured for this. I think this is the context to be able to see BIM compared to actual or actual compared to actual in terms of progress. How do you actually create the imagery that's used in the CupixWorks platform? - Yes. One of the big strengths of CupixWorks is, we have actually a variety of methods for being able to capture a site. They all start with just the simple 360 camera. So we work with [many of] the different 360 [cameras]. You can see our list [www.Cupix.com] but essentially, walk around this iOS app on a -- most of the time an iPhone. You can use an iPad as well to capture a site. Now you essentially have -- - So for clarification, you're using either an iPhone or an iPad in order to run the camera but it's actually the camera that's capturing the image? - Yes. So we only -- our algorithms specifically only deal with 360 imagery and our app enables you to capture it a couple of different ways. So we have like high resolution HDR methods, where you stop, stand still, take a capture and then move around and then we're able to stitch each location together. And that's a similar concept to what a lot of Matterport users do, that there'll be familiar with: different tripod locations going around, except this can be handheld -- held in really in any orientation, even if you stick it out to the side, stick it through a window or stick it through a shaft, an elevator core. We're still able to orient the navigation and each image so that you're looking at it -- correctly. - Okay, let me go a little bit slower with you. As capture is really an important feature of CupixWorks. So it's device agnostic. So any 360 camera can be used to capture imagery for CupixWorks. - Several. Many 360 cameras can be used. - Many? Is that because the Cupix app that works on iOS only works with certain 360 cameras? - The behind the scenes of why working with different cameras. It's always calibration issues and things that ... So you have to do a lot of work to add a new 360 camera. - Well give us the short list. What's the short list of under thousand dollars, 360 cameras that are compatible with CupixWorks? - The primary cameras we work with are the Ricoh Theta line of cameras. - Okay Ricoh Theta V, Ricoh Theta Z1, Ricoh Theta SC2. - We specifically work with V and Z1. - Ricoh Theta V and Ricoh Theta Z1. Okay. - And then another one that we really enjoy using is the MADV 360 camera. It's not as well known but it works really well for our purpose. And our entire camera kit with the [MADV] is just like $300 to get started. - Okay, we'll come to pricing later but any additional 360 cameras presently supported by Cupix? - When we also work with Insta360. - Okay so, Insta360 ONE X2, Insta360 ONE X. Insta360 ONE R. - The ONE R and the ONE X: those two. - Okay and, but not the X2. - Correct. - As of today. - As of today. - As of today, Thursday, June 17th, 2021. Okay, great then, and I believe you can use other cameras, but really, in terms of a fast, efficient workflow, these are the cameras we're really talking about. - In terms of, I don't think we really allow integration with other cameras. So primarily just that list of four cameras. - Okay and let's take the Ricoh Theta Z1E: a thousand dollar camera. three ways to use it or four ways? - Essentially, there are four ways to use it. And I have just a quick little video just showing people. - That'd be great. - I can pull that up for you. And essentially there's a couple methods. First, there's the single shot. That's where, for every capture you have a floor plan on your phone. You just select where on the floor plan you are. And then it just takes a static image and actually, through different capture modes, we also have different ways to hold the camera. You can, as in this video, use a monopod or some kind of pole like that. You can use just a handheld selfie stick to hold it. Many people have a camera mount on their helmets. I think this one actually shows it. So here you can see you have a camera; the camera attached to your helmet. And this is primarily used in video mode where it's easy -- you don't even have to hold anything in your hands. You can just click, go with the video and walk through the site. And just recently we did start supporting a different method to capture. Lots of our customers were using this way on our site. So we're starting to make this a little bit more public now but actually allowing you to capture via a drone. So mount the camera on the drone and fly it, which is good for getting different perspectives of your site and for exterior views of the building. - On the drone, do you still need to maintain connectivity with an iOS device? - Drone workflow is a little bit different: so no, you do not. You capture the data separately, and then we have a different way to upload the data into our servers. - Awesome! And that 4th method, I see Cluster Shot. Can you explain that? - Cluster Shot is what would be most familiar to Matterport users. It's where you take a series of individual shots and then it's a different type of algorithm than a video where you're walking fluidly. This -- you could essentially -- have the camera in any angle, around any variety of pieces of equipment and things like that, and take high resolution captures that way. So typically, most of our users do some combination of video shot and Cluster Shot on their projects. - So, I imagine there's some trade offs and reasons. When do I want to use a single shot? Perhaps I am just moving a tripod or I'm just holding up a selfie stick with the camera, versus having a video captured. - People like video and Cluster Shot because these are automatic processes. It allows them to just quickly place, capture throughout a site and move quickly. Single Shot could be for people who want a lot more control and where their images are taken and they're maybe not taking as high volume number of captures. So perhaps you're happy just having a single shot in each room and you just want to place one imagery location in each room in the floor plan. So you can go in there; snap one and then walk out. Whereas if you do a Cluster Shot or video, you're frequently capturing probably multiple shot images as you're walking into the room and then walk back out. - Is there a trade off of the quality of the imagery of doing single shot versus video? - The highest quality imagery relates to using single shot and also Cluster Shot. Each of those, you're taking a single frame from the camera and we also have HDR modes. So you can do the HDR modes that are built in with these devices. With video, it's captured as a time-lapse video. So two frames every second and those videos do come in at a little bit more image blur; a little bit more exposure setting issues. So the videos are not as clear as single and Cluster Shots. - So I imagine that if I am interested in speed of capture, particularly with weekly construction documentation, if I'm talking about a 25-story, 500,000 SQ FT office building under renovation, I probably want to be in video mode. And I likely don't really care as much about the image quality. And so the speed of capture. Does that sound like when I would want to be on video mode? - Yeah, and we really find people like a hybrid of both methods. So whether many times for large areas or areas where you don't necessarily have or need as high resolution then, you do the video shot because you can capture it so much faster. But then for maybe key locations, really complicated areas where you want to get a lot of detail, then you switch over to Cluster Shot to be able to capture those key locations. - Okay and the single shot might be, oh, the building's ready to be delivered. It's got all these nice finishes. You really care about photography. Then you might move to HDR single shot in order to capture the space towards the conclusion of the project. - Correct, yeah. So yes if you want more control over the site or you just want just a more simple method, yep, single shot, you're able to capture it that way. - Do you have any estimates on how long it takes to do a capture? Ah, look at this, great. - Yeah and you can see the difference is about 20X, depending on the environment. So everyone's familiar with site capture, but the complexity in the environment is always a huge factor. So here we're comparing open warehouse space or maybe an outdoor location compared to an environment, maybe like an office building or complex industrial facility or factory that has lots of rooms or lots of equipment you have to move around. So the fastest method is the video shot and we have customers doing a multi-hundred SQ FT facility on a weekly basis. So they do a lot of video, just put on the helmet, walk around and we've seen about 750,000 SQ FT an hour. And that's just walking at a steady pace and video shot. Many times we say you walk like you have a hot cup of coffee; so you never want to be too abrupt in your movements but just a smooth and steady pace. - So I am literally tingling looking at this slide because I'm either in amazement or disbelief. So I need your help. I need to understand a little bit more. Let's stay on this slide just for a moment: on open warehouse space using video, 750,000 SQ FT. Can I even walk that fast? I mean, is that, and I'm thinking I, when I do rows of walking that kind of have the imagery connected, I probably can't be more than what, five to seven feet away or? Help me understand. So if I was doing Matterport for example, which Matterport officially supports up to 10,000 SQ FT, officially supports up to 200 scans. I think they would probably push back and say, well, we have a way we can do a hundred thousand or 200 or 300, 400,000 SQ FT, but it probably max is out there and you may or may not be successful actually completing your scan. So these CupixWorks numbers are really incredible, in terms of capture. I just want to see how best we can make it apples-to-apples comparison. So if I'm doing 750,000 SQ FT, is that based on the fact that I'm walking briskly and I'm doing a row every five to seven feet to my left. - So it works a little differently in that, you don't necessarily have to have the spacing, parallel, between parallel lanes. If you're zigzagging, doing a little lawnmower pattern through a facility, you don't have to stay within five feet or 10 feet of each lane. Typically, I'm looking back and actually I can show an example in a little bit. I think they're doing one in each bay. So it might be 20, 30 feet for each path but we're tracking the linear path that the person is walking. - And will that still create a three-dimensional model that I can walk from, let's call it scan-to-scan-to-scan: scan-to-scan? Even though I was in lane one, I now can walk to lane two even though it was shot some distance away. - Yes. So you're able to navigate or pull a 3D virtual space. If you have a model - a 3D model -- uploaded to your project, it's automatically located within that. If not, we're just automatically located within a floor plan. - So looking at this slide, I can't overemphasize this, because this really just blows me away looking at it. Even if we go to many small rooms using video and capturing 35,000 SQ FT, I would say maybe a Matterport photographer could do 35,000 SQ FT, maybe 2,000 SQ FT an hour. So, essentially this is saying it's at least [17 Times] the speed of Matterport. And I think if I was in the AEC space, one of the questions I'd want to ask Matterport is, "Hey, officially, how many scans do you support?" "Officially, how many SQ FT does Matterport support?" So that you get that in writing, because, every time in the We Get Around Network Forum somebody who runs into a problem doing Matterport to do large space, it's because eventually Matterport comes back and says, "well, we don't actually support tours that are bigger than 10,000 SQ FT ... and, 200 scans," even though their salespeople will tell you, "[Matterport] can shoot 300,000 SQ FT, 400,000 SQ FT without a problem." So get it in writing. That would be a great question to ask. So even doing 35,000 SQ FT for Matterport, even if it was possible, do 2,000 SQ FT an hour, that's still about 17 hours compared to one hour. Am I making this up here? - ... That's one of the huge aspects, is most of the people on site -- many times they're not even capturing for a full hour each week. They might go walk around for 30 minutes, capture their site, come back to the office and they're done for the week. - Yes. We've spent a lot of time on this slide because it is absolutely that important. If you are an architect. You are an engineer or you are a general contractor, you probably understand that the most expensive part of capture is actually the [time of the] person who's doing the capture. So if you can capture in an hour with CupixWorks versus Matterport -- that might take 17 hours and struggle to actually process the model -- that's crazy! - Yes. That's not the only aspect: the speed of capture is one and also the scale of a site is another. We don't have any limits on the number of images or number of captures we have on a site or even square footage. We have some facilities that are very massive. I don't know the numbers but just these massive developments going on -- and we're able to load them all up and render them. It's pretty exciting! - And in terms of capture -- so let's say we are talking about a million SQ FT. We'll go back to my example, a half a million SQ FT: 25 stories and a half a million SQ FT. Does that have to be captured by one person or could five people all take a floor or take five floors of that building? - Yes. It is possible to merge captures from multiple devices or multiple people together and then have them all synthesized in our viewer. So you could have, if you want to break up the work a certain way, you could have people -- - With a 25-story building, five people each doing five floors. But I think what I'm even hearing is 500,000 SQ FT for CupixWorks is not really a big deal for someone to walk the entire space every day or every week or every month, whatever's needed in terms of construction documentation. But I asked because with Matterport, you can't merge floors from different cameras. You can use a different camera. You can switch from a Leica BLK 360 to a Matterport Pro2 to a Ricoh Theta Z1 in the same shoot. But it must be one model that's shot. So you don't have the ability to have five different people all work on the same space in order to get the documentation done sooner. Maybe we're talking about a space that has people and you're limited by certain hours and therefore you need to have multiple people do the data collection so you're not capturing during office hours or mall hours, for example. - Yes. And that is a benefit of CupixWorks, is if you have multiple people; different cameras. Typically what we see is -- maybe you have one person tasked with -- "Hey. You need to capture every week at a specific time." And you can go and capture the video; just walking around the site. And then other people that -- as issues come up or as key locations need to be tracked; "Hey. We have these three spots that we really want high resolution images. Can you go and do that? And, so they might use a different camera; or a different method; video method versus Cluster Shots method but essentially you're able to merge all of it together into our viewer. - I think when you were describing Cluster Shots, the interesting thing there is -- if you needed closeups of mechanical or plumbing, electrical, it's up in the ceiling. You literally can! Or, around the boiler in order to capture depth data. You can just move that camera anywhere. That's really not possible with Matterport. You can't, in a practical sense, put the Matterport camera up into the ceiling, let alone tilted at some angle. So that seems like a tremendous advantage of CupixWorks, when you've got odd spaces that need to be captured, particularly mechanical, electrical, plumbing related spaces. How about outdoors or any issues with capture outdoors? - No limitations with outdoors because we're primarily only using it, it's just a standard 360 camera. We're not dealing with the infrared type of depth sensor, like Matterport has. So there's no limitations based on the infrared light. - So if you were interested in doing, let's say the top floor that's under construction and there's no ceiling and the sun is pouring in, doesn't affect CupixWorks capture in any way. For Matterport, I guess if you're in the AEC space, the question to ask Matterport is, "Help me understand the difference of a 360 View and the 360 Scan and help me understand what's the difference of the walk-around experiences and help me understand what I can measure and can't measure. Because there's -- I think what Matterport would probably say is, "Oh! No! You can shoot outdoors. That's not a problem, you just use a 360 View; but again that doesn't allow the measurement I'm going to -- I could imagine with CupixWorks, no matter how you capture the data, you still can measure three dimensionally within the model. - Yeah, that's correct. With Cupix: two aspects. So with the lighting, the only effect that the lighting has is similar to all cameras; just making sure that exposure is right. If you are going between a really dark place or a really bright space, just make sure -- just in video mode, it doesn't adjust as well as an individual shot mode does. - Okay. All right. So I've come out. I completed my 360 photography. Let's say I did my video: 25-stories, 500,000 SQ FT. So an office building. Okay, how do I get it into the CupixWorks platform? - It's similar to the traditional process people are familiar with for Matterport. You just simply upload the images; upload the scans to our servers, our cloud processes it. Our turnaround time is, at max 24 hours. So typically, if people scan their construction project one day, they get it the following morning. Yes. And then from there you have it in your viewer and you can sort by dates, sort by levels and navigate your entire project. - Okay. So I'm hearing 24 hours but I think I heard something else too. If it's by the end of the day, maybe I'm done on my job site, it's 6 or 8 PM. Is there a reasonable expectation that I might wake up in the morning, be in the office 8 or 9 AM -- be on the site 8 or 9 AM -- and it's ready? So is the commitment level 24 hours but typically, it's still ready overnight for most of us in the United States. - Correct. Yes. So max time that we kind of guarantee you and promise is that 24 hours, average times are much faster than that. - Okay. So what I just suggest for our audience who might be thinking, "Oh. I'm looking at Matterport, but I heard of CupixWorks. And I'm trying to understand the difference. Again, I would ask the Matterport rep, "if you have a model of 500,000 SQ FT?" The short answer is -- it's just not possible with Matterport -- but let's say it was a 100,000 SQ FT that you broke up the building into 25 models. You now have maybe 50,000 SQ FT or a 100,000 SQ FT. Ask the question, "how long does that take to process?" --- (Continued below ...) (Continued from above ...) --- Because you might be surprised that it doesn't come back in 24 hours and it might take two days or three days, but there's certainly no commitment level that I'm aware of. Matterport to say we guarantee that we will process your model within 24 hours of that size. - And one aspect that we also provide to our customers is after all the algorithms are done processing, we always have our customer success rep look at each model to QA it and to make sure that we're delivering a good result back to you. And so we have people -- our customer support team actively working with our customers and making sure that they are able to capture their projects. - So this is interesting, Because Matterport just processes the model automatically and sends it back. I think I'm hearing something slightly different here: our process is automated. But that said, if there is an issue, we actually have a QA quality control person that's actually looking at it before it gets delivered in case there needs to be some cleanup or adjustments. - Exactly. And there's -- because you're dealing with people; with a camera on their helmet, they're walking around a site. Sometimes they just walk too fast or whip around corners, things like that. And so that's a situation where there are four frames where you ran around this corner, they kind of broke and they're not oriented the correct way. So we'll fix it for you and then we get the feedback, but next time try not to do that again. And so that's the benefit, is we're able to work with our people to have success on every project. - Awesome, okay. So the model has been processed. Talk about hosting. Cloud hosted. And is it ... can I host it on my own server or does it need to be cloud hosted? And if so, what's the security? - That's definitely one of the benefits of CupixWorks, is we give you a lot more flexibility, in terms of data ownership, owning your data, in terms of where it's hosted, if you use AWS. If you have high security constraints, you can use private AWS servers. There are government approved AWS servers. So there are a lot of options for you to own the data. Download the data or control it at the end of a project or make sure it's on approved locations during the project. - And is there offline hosting as well? - There's no offline hosting but there is an aspect for our enterprise level customers. Many times, the site documentation needs to be preserved for many years after a project. You are allowed to download the data to keep it in a secure file for archival. And then we do have an offline viewer to be able to access it. But if you ever need to spin up that project again, say for example, we have many people using us through the pre-construction, during construction and the handover. So I guess more to facility management and over the entire life cycle of the building, if you're using it more from a facility management perspective, then you need to use the hosted version online. - Okay, so let me see if I can break this down a little bit. So a typical client understands AWS, Amazon Cloud. Totally happy: know that it's reliable, secure and it's accessible. But if I'm a super-large client and I have my own Amazon Cloud and I want the data hosted in my Amazon Cloud, that's okay with Cupix? - Correct, yeah. We can set that up for enterprise level customers. - Okay. So Matterport doesn't do that. So if you are looking at Matterport, ask your rep every which way to Sunday, "I have my own Amazon Cloud. I want it hosted in my cloud. And if you get an answer, "Yes. Please get back to us in the We Get Around Network Forum because as far as we know, that's never, ever happened. Second, in terms of ownership and use of the data. So does Cupix take any ownership in the data? Does it use the data for any other purpose? - So that is another aspect of this industry: people want to control their data. People want to control their projects. There is a huge liability; these huge projects online. So we have it that customers do control their data and completely own their data. When they shut down a project or remove it, we don't have access to it anymore. So we do require them to save an offline copy. - And does Cupix create derivative works from the data? - There is an option that customers can opt into to allow us to use their data for R&D purposes. Much of that is our research related to all the algorithms, which is doing the processing. - But that's an option if customers want. - Yes. You can opt in. So if, if you are in the AEC space and you're comparing Matterport and CupixWorks, one of the questions you want to ask your Matterport rep is, "I understand that the user agreement allows Matterport to create derivative works from the models that we upload to the platform." And probe on that and if they say, "that's not the case." Get that in writing. Because Matterport does create derivative works from Matterport tours and uses that in other ways and sells it in other ways and is likely to use it in APIs. So something to ask. It's likely that you'll get the answer that you own the copyright in your work, but the fact is, the copyright, your work can only be displayed within Matterport. There's no offline hosting. So something to probe is ownership of data. Let's talk a little bit about password control and access. I think I want to ask this a little bit differently. It's an open-ended question. Tell me about the CupixWorks collaboration. - Yes. We understand that on an active project, you have many different levels of people operating at many different locations or areas within the project. So we actually have a very detailed hierarchy of permissions in terms of groups of types of people that are allowed to view it. How much access they have. Whether it's view only. Whether it's view and comment. Or whether it's editing the project as well. For example, we have owners who want to have access to the entire project, but if you're a general contractor and perhaps you're using this tool for your coordination meetings, you can give out access to CupixWorks to all of your individual subcontractors. But perhaps limit that by a specific level. So only a single floor of a building. You could even limit access by specific dates. So only give them a date window in which they're allowed to view. So there's many different options for controlling the levels of how much detail they can see; what they're allowed to do with that information; and then who can use it. So we have a very robust system specifically designed for the AEC industry. - So what I would suggest anyone that's interested in just thinking about Matterport versus CupixWorks, ask your Matterport rep about collaboration because [Matterport] collaboration is super-limited in terms of the admin of it or I've given someone access to annotate and unless something's changed recently, that's about it. So all the different granular descriptions, Gannon, that you've described for CupixWorks is just not even an option with Matterport collaboration, access and permissions. I think CupixWorks has some collaboration features in terms of real-time and annotation. And maybe, could you talk a little bit about that for CupixWorks? - Yes. The annotation feature -- we showed a little bit of that earlier -- The big aspect that we enable is, in many ways, just a standard issue tracking. Standard logging of questions, tasks, RFIs, but what really makes it unique is that spatial component. Being able to navigate it within a 2D model, within a 3D model, knowing exactly where these issues are, go and jump in and look around. And the one other benefit is, we do have a lot of deep BIM integrations. So depending on which, we have active integrations directly with BIM 360, PlanGrid and Procore. But if you're working with say, some facility management software or some other system, we can actually export all this data in what's called the BCF format, which is a new BIM specific industry format for maintaining all the metadata of the information, as well as the spatial location. So you can move it in and out of our system. - BCF, BIM Collaboration Format. - Correct. - So it sounds like -- if you're trying to make a decision between Matterport and CupixWorks, one of the things to ask your internal team is which platforms are important to us. So if PlanGrid, Procore and BIM 360 and perhaps yet other BIM related solutions that can integrate with BCF, is to ask Matterport, what integrations they have. Because, when I look at CupixWorks, one of the things that strikes me; it's a living three-dimensional model that allows for annotation by any trade to document problems, challenges and to easily pinpoint it within a three-dimensional model as opposed to, "Oh. I've taken a photo and I've emailed it off to someone." Do you want to talk any more about how that annotation fits into reducing site visits or reducing rework or tracking progress or preventing disputes? - Yes. I mean, the biggest thing is really just providing all the information in one place. So having a single hub that can act as, like you said, your living, breathing, as-built documentation. Another popular term is the digital twin. So really documenting the history of all these issues within the space. You have the timeline of issues over time, of the photos over time. A couple other things that I'll mention. We also have, when you bring up the concepts of a BIM, we essentially understand the site at like three different levels. We understand it on the level: what floor are you on at time. What point in time are you looking at? And you can also look at the concept of rooms, which is an area or a grouping of information. So on a large project, you can have a table of, if you have a BIM model and you import your Revit model, it can automatically extract the names and an area of different rooms. So this is another way for you to manage or quickly navigate to specific areas. "Hey. I want to go to this classroom and see what is happening here and separately..." - Gannon, forgive me, the print is so small. I am having trouble with it. Could you just, in a big picture, describe the columns and the rows. - Yes. Here on the left is the list of rooms. So, this is the same concept in your BIM model or floor plan. You have different room names. I think if I make this map bigger, we can see that in a second. And then to the right is, this is the time-lapse aspect. So overtime, a capture on June 4th, a capture on July 19th on September 13th. So you can go to a specific date and time and a specific level. - And how hard is it to find that annotation in a specific room on a specific date? - If you know the name of a space, you can just type it in and query and it'll just find it right here. So we even have a search bar. So if you know you're looking for specifically mechanical room 105 -- or anything -- you just type in MEP 105 and you can find that; query it. See what dates you have captured. In this case, we have all dates captured. It's possible you might have a capture; a couple of times but not every time. - Yes, so when you called up that specific room, it called up the 3D tour and BIM models for that room. And now I imagine with those, either those tabs at the bottom, the labels at the bottom of each 3D tour, that you can change the date or in your information panel at the right, select one of those markers by date to take you there. So it looks like you have two ways to get there. - Yes. You have many ways to get there. You can search by the name in the search bar. Go to a specific room. You can pick a date in the table view. Pick a date in the main view. So it really depends on -- even how you like to think. You're in a project and you're just thinking, "I want to get to this area." We make it easy to navigate that section. - And can you just take us through the annotation and either point out if that's PlanGrid or if that's that part of the Cupix native platform for annotation? - Yes. So within the native application for annotations, we have the ability to even create templates or groups. So depending on the type of projects you're on, you can even have preset forms. So if you need to go through a facility to do an inspection, you have a preset form of questions. So you can set that up within your template. So you can go through an area, select one of those questions, fill it out and do that quickly. And really in terms of how it syncs, whether using Procore or PlanGrid, it kind of all syncs the same way as you add the annotation, it tracks a location. And let's say that you're able to take those notes. - And so those notes, I think at the highest level, are about reducing site visits: Inspect. Measure. Annotate. I think we'll take a look at that in a second, reducing rework. Tracking progress. Preventing disputes at the highest level. That's what this level of detail is about. - Yeah, it's true, however, you're really managing your project. It gives you that option to do it that way. - Before we take it off screen share, I just want to pause for a moment. So again, if you're in the AEC space and you're trying to make a decision, you've heard about Matterport, kind of the gorilla in this space, more investment perhaps but nevertheless, you've discovered CupixWorks and you're trying to compare CupixWorks 2.0 versus Matterport. What Gannon is showing us here is side-by-side, either side-by-side weekly, monthly, daily construction progress or side-by-side with BIM. Ask your Matterport rep, "if you can do that." Short answer: No, you can't. There's no side-by-side comparison in Matterport of anything like this. And if you find that little mini-map on the left side helpful for navigation, Matterport does not offer that solution for navigation. Now that said, there's something called the Highlight Reel in Matterport. Does CupixWorks have thumbnails within the tour to jump from place-to-place? - There are concepts that are very popular; like construction tools like Navisworks that are called viewpoints. So we don't have viewpoints in that way, where you can curate a list of views. Though, typically when people do that it is just when you share a model, you can share and create a new link. So whenever you create a new share link, it actually saves that view. So if you want to send a specific view to someone, you can do it that way or potentially through an RFI, through annotation. - Okay, and in the collaboration, is there anything like Skype or excuse me, Zoom? Is there anything like Zoom meets CupixWorks built into the platform? - No video conferencing aspect. The main aspect is for asynchronous communication. Going back and forth between comments and annotations. You can see who's actively in a model to get multiple people in a model at a time. You can see that. But for the most part, the purpose is to share and communicate about an issue. - Okay so, the safety person may annotate a model overnight. Asynchronously give direction about things on the job site that needs to be dealt with now. - Yes. That's definitely a viable use case. - And you mentioned a couple of things earlier in terms of unique captures -- or ways. And I think you just mentioned can you go above the ceiling? And this is really just a perennial problem or challenges. It's very hard to document these complex spaces and in typically healthcare facilities, you're only allowed to access things. It has to be very secure and sealed, through something like this to prevent dust and contaminants from getting into these sensitive labs. And so in this capture, you can see the entire floor plan recapture the entire wing of a facility, but in this one specific room, they wanted to develop a ceiling. So we actually had that as a layer. So we're able to capture the floor plan and then come up through here. And where's the hole at the bottom? Oh there it is, there. So you can see, you're in this sealed barrier and with a long extension pole, essentially be able to stick the camera in different angles and see the space. So you can see there's not even much room around here. And there's a corner right here. Just to illustrate this a little bit more. And this is what we say when we have it in 3D, is we actually have the exact orientation of each panorama photo of this above ceiling space. So each 360 photo is tied into the exact location. - So is there a layer that I can say, "Show me anything above seven feet?" - Typically how this is oriented is just the level of feature. So you can go to the below ceiling or the above ceiling level. - Great, okay. That's amazing itself, certainly Matterport does not offer that. - Yes. And documenting environments like this are near impossible. - Yes. I would say you could probably do this in a Matterport tour using a 360 camera and set it on a 360 View, but good luck in terms of having it show up in the right place and having to deal with manually moving the location of that 360 to actually be in the right place. - Correct. And that's what enables this type of capture, is that Cluster Shot, where you can take a series of individual shots and then it's a unique algorithm that we do, where we can fit them all together in the correct position. - Okay. I did ask you about the Highlight Reel and you answered about how you could just share a specific link. But I think that what I think of as a mini-map, the 2D schematic floor plan on the left, I would imagine everyone in AEC in the construction space is just used to reading floor plans. And that's probably the most natural way in the AEC space to navigate the space and quickly go to a specific place, and I'm guessing on this little mini-map in the bottom left, gives me a choice of floors, is that I could say, I want to be on floor two, floor three ... So, or maybe that's what I'm changing; the floor for the tour. The mini-map is automatically changing as well. - Correct, so whenever you switch, you can see we're at the entire hospital floor now, once I switched onto the bottom floor versus when I switched to the above ceiling, you just see that reflected ceiling plan. So we actually can. Projects have dozens and dozens of floor plans. So you can upload multiple floor plans, multiple construction documents, multiple 3D models to the site and cycle between them as needed. - And does the 360 panorama, each one of those dots representing the 360 panorama? Does it show up on this floor plan automatically? Or does somebody actually have to put the 360s in the right place? - Yes. And so as this magical love of the algorithm, is we have it set. It requires a floor plan to start with. So you start with the floor plan, but once you have that, we're able to -- - So where does that floor plan come from? That comes from the client who has a floor plan and just simply uploads it. And then is this the algorithm or is this the quality control person or a little bit of both? - The very first time you start a project. So the very first time you have to start up the floor plan and when you import it, there's a couple of steps in a wizard, just to import it. But once you have that set up, then the algorithm automatically locates it within the floor plan. So just while you're capturing, you say I'm on floor one, I'm on floor two. And then if they are able to fit its location within that map. - So how does the camera or the Cupix iOS app know where it is in the floor plan? Are you telling it when you capture to say, "Hey. This is where I am on the floor plan. - There's a couple of quick questions; a manual input that we request. For example, if you're doing a video walk through a floor plan, you say, "This is where I started," just to give it an initial constraint but then after that, it's completely automatic. - That's awesome. Gannon, what I love about you showing this piece to me right now is -- "Well, of course, this is how it works." But anyone who's trying to make a decision about Matterport and CupixWorks, should take those shots from this show and say, "Hey. Look Matterport sales rep. I'd like to see your mini-map of the 2D schematic floor plan showing where I am within the space." And the short answer is Matterport does not offer that. - Yeah, and that's one of the aspects of -- from the beginning and we built this from the ground up for AEC users to be used in construction and the design process. And ours is less of a highly polished marketing tool. Instead, it's a very robust and functional tool that integrates with a lot of BIM software; construction software. - Let me go back for a moment to the hosting. We talked about that there's an offline storage version and there is a viewer. So it sounds like with CupixWorks, if you needed to have the model offline, do you still get the full viewing, robust experience? - So the offline model is primarily a kind of archival and compliance capability. So, it's not as much for active projects. It has limited functionality. So the offline viewer is able to save the floor plans and all the imagery. So you can still navigate, move around but none of the other functionality works. So it's primarily just reviewing once a project is complete but that's more of a niche use case. - That's fine and then would I still use that offline archive to upload again to Cupix if I needed to restore that model for use? - Yes. If you ever wanted to restore it and turn it into an active project again, you can reactivate a new license of Cupix and yes, upload it. - Okay and then talk to me a little bit about backup. So it's in the Amazon Cloud. Is it, if I needed, if I needed to add to a model I can add to a model. - Yes. It's all the redundancies and backups and capabilities I would expect from a cloud software. So there's multiple safety layers. - So someone who's particularly interested in backups and security and privacy. Obviously as CupixWorks more on that topic. I think that the questions to ask with Matterport is to say, "please explain the backup process with Matterport." Because I would tell you that there really is no practical backup process. Matterport will explain how you can save files on your iPad through a very convoluted process but one would think you would just upload it to the Matterport cloud. And if you ever needed to download it, you could. And the short answer is, no Matterport doesn't offer that. And there is no practical Matterport backup or offline with the exception, as Matterport enables the downloading of a model to an iPad. But once it's down on the iPad, you don't have any way to actually share it or do anything with it. And I think the other piece to probe with Matterport would be offline archive because there isn't, you can, and there isn't any practical way to store stuff. And there isn't any practical way unless you literally save your iPads. And every time you shoot a project, once you fill up an iPad is to go buy another iPad. Or I could explain to you, in fact, I'll just simply send people to the, We Get Around Network Forum: WGANForum.com and use the search box for "Warning Will Robinson" or "backup" or "restore" And that'll take you to a lot of discussions on this crazy topic of Matterport backup and restore: really just horrible. And they know it, it's something that the We Get Around Network Forum Community has documented probably for seven and a half years of what's the backup and restore process should be. Happy to hear with CupixWorks, at least you can archive it and have it and then you have all these methods for backup in the cloud. In terms of, on your website, www.Cupix.com www.Cupix.com there's a discussion about cameras and kits. Can you tell me a little bit about CupixWorks kits? - Yeah, essentially we allow, as I mentioned before, a variety of capture methods. And it's all just to provide ultimate flexibility. - Do I buy my own Ricoh Theta Z1 or Cupix to load me up with the gear that I need based on the project that I'm about to begin doing? - If you have a camera and a selfie stick, essentially, you could use that and that is fine. Most of our customers don't have to think about that or go find things on the market. So we provide pre-bundled packages depending on their needs. So we have a variety of cameras available, bundled along with things like external battery, external lighting for unique, low light environments. Different options are, there's the helmet mount, if you want to do the walkthrough quickly. Sometimes there is an extended pole that can go up to 15 feet. If you're trying to get high up, maybe above ceiling, maybe above tall equipment, what else? Yes. Those are the main options. So essentially short selfie-stick. Long pole. Helmet. Drone mounts. Those are some of the options that we give people. - Okay. So I think what I'm hearing is a little bit different than Matterport. Matterport will tell you what cameras are compatible, go buy it. And if you're in the AEC space and you're looking at CupixWorks and you define what the project is, Cupix will put together the kit for you of the gear that's necessary to shoot it. So you don't have to think about "well what is it that I need?" It all comes in a kit. - Yes. And we have some guides to be able to let you know which kit items you need. And really, we're built around flexibility: whether you want to put on a drone; whether you want to walk around with the video; your individual shots. So we have people documenting shipping containers or submarines to just standard construction sites office spaces. So now running the gamut really. - Which kind of, it diverts me a little bit, but it's such an interesting question. So on a submarine, I could imagine there's a lot of security issues. When the imagery gets uploaded to Cupix. Do you have any access to see what's being processed? Do your customer support people? Can they see the tour? You mentioned that there are quality assurance people that are -- sound like they're looking at the tour to do something. But I imagine that some clients don't want anybody looking at anything. Period. End of story. Could you talk about that? - Yes. So the default for our users is to let our customer success manager view each model and to help provide feedback and guidance and be that second set of eyes as a QA. So you don't have to worry about that kind of thing, but we do have the option to opt-out of that and make it so it is a secure pipeline, so we can't see it. So you can opt-out of that QA process. So it's only the algorithms processing it and then you get the information directly. - So it's possible to say, I don't want anybody to see this. And does that meet some level of security by people who think about that kind of stuff? - Yes. So that typically kind of falls within this enterprise level of customer that needs intense security or privacy requirements. And so this is typically bundled with things like their own private cloud servers that they're using for data storage, controlling who has access to it. So we essentially built this platform to be very enterprise friendly. So whatever your requirements are, we have an option for you. - Okay, LiDAR support. - Yeah, so primarily, Cupix is -- in terms of the type of processing that we do -- is we use 360 cameras to document a space. And like we mentioned, however you hold it; there's the helmet; or a drone walking around. That's fine. But beyond that, our viewer is very robust and can hold all your project data; so we can have your floor plans, your BIM models, your 360 imagery data and also LiDAR data. So whether you're using terrestrial scanning or have I mobile mapping LiDAR, you can upload that onto our servers to be able to host it all together. So similar to how you have compared to the BIM model, that you can also view point cloud data; take measurements from it. If you want to house all this data in one location. - Okay, awesome. How about in terms of exporting data? At the top of the show I mentioned a 25-story, 500,000 SQ FT office building going through renovation. That's really at the beginning; there are no construction documents that exist for this old building. We really do need an as-built. Okay. We go create this three-dimensional CupixWorks model. Other features for exporting in order to bring it into a BIM model to begin, whether it's Revit or SketchUp or other CAD programs to begin with the as-built? - At this time we do not provide any deliverables like that, like a 3D point cloud or a 3D mesh from our model. So there are no outputs you can download directly from our captures. So we primarily use, if it's more like a sparse map. So we know the position/location of each image within it. And so we build a map that way and it's scaled and dimensioned correctly. And that's what enables some measurements as well. But it's basically all behind the scenes. It's nothing that you can download or view directly. - A bigger question: can I use Cupix for creating an as-built? - Not for creating a floor plan. So if you need to create a floor plan, there are a variety of methods that you can use. - Okay, but there's no export in a three-dimensional CAD file today with Cupix? - No. You typically recommend the best practice is that you already have a floor plan that you can use, even if it's outdated. So something that's similar; that is ideal. Occasionally you can come in with no floor plan and still create a capture. But the outputs that we create do not allow you to create a floor plan from it. - Okay so score one for Matterport. We've been visiting for an hour and 15 minutes. This is actually the -- I think the first time that we've hit something that Matterport has something today better than CupixWorks, which is you can export a MatterPak. You can order a Matterport MatterPak: The point cloud files and a variety of other files that can then be converted to CAD programs. This is actually the first time I think we've actually hit on something that Matterport is actually better though, if we're talking about a 500,000 SQ FT space trying to create an as-built with Matterport, good luck. Because you probably have to break it into 50,000 to 100,000 SQ FT spaces and shoot multiple models. And maybe you can do the math faster than I can. If it takes two hours to shoot. It takes an hour to shoot 2,000 SQ FT with Matterport and it's 500,000 SQ FT building. How many hours? - I wasn't, I didn't catch the numbers thrown out. - Hey Siri, 500,000 divided by 2,000. - [Siri] 500,000 divide. - It's 250 hours. So it would take 250 hours, I should ask Siri how many days that is. It's too massive a project to even think about it. Okay, again, and we've covered a lot of ground. Before we sign off, is there anything that we didn't cover today about "Building Smart" with Cupix? - Yes. There's one more kind of visually interesting thing I could show, related to that drone capture. Like we mentioned, we keep talking about flexibility, flexibility, flexibility, how you capture, types of spaces you capture. So our algorithm is able to work in a variety of environments, even in the air mounted on a drone flying around. So this was a 250,000 SQ FT facility that did a nine minute drone flight on. And we have the same -- some of the same capabilities that related to having -- having it synced with your BIM. So if you're trying to understand what is documented on the roof lines, the equipment is installed in the correct location. You can look at that. So it's just one more option that we kind of give you. CupixWorks handles the whole spectrum of needs your project might have. So I just wanted to bring that up. And I think earlier you did mention too, like warehouses and what type of patterns you walk in a warehouse. So, here you can see, this is the floor plans. So you can just see the whole lawnmower pattern of just zigzag walking around the space and you can see how it's going to be built out in the future. So here, it's actually in the wall. - Yeah, this is an interesting space because if you had to do this space with Matterport -- again, if you're in the AEC space -- you're trying to make a decision between Matterport and CupixWorks. Ask your Matterport rep specifically, "how that empty warehouse space gets shot?" And asking them for some type of guarantee regarding success. Because I bought my Matterport camera in July of 2014. And I can tell you, and I'm the Founder of a Community of a ton of Matterport Service Providers. I think our knowledge base I'm looking at is 84,000 posts among 14,000 topics. And a lot of the discussion is about large spaces. A lot of the discussion is about large open spaces. And this is exactly the kind of space that is super-challenging for Matterport to capture because Matterport infrared is looking, is trying to map the space and the whole space looks the same. If you're far away from those posts, then you have a shiny floor and the ceilings too far for Matterport camera to know where it is. This is a really super-difficult space to do with a Matterport Pro2 3D Camera. Yes. You could use a Ricoh Theta Z1 and there'll be a crazy workflow around how to use that. But the short answer is, if you have spaces, open spaces like this, super-hard, probably almost impossible really to do with Matterport. I guess you could do it using some AprilTags -- things that look like QR codes -- but again, super-super-super hard. And it's super-large, which then creates this challenge for processing. I'm sorry, Gannon, you were showing us that space but I just had to add that commentary to it. - Yes. So that's the benefit of a tripod sensor. With a depth-sensor -- and the right environment -- you have better quality, like measurement capabilities, but it's also relying on that depth-sensor. So in a lot of environments, it can fail. Whereas Cupix is a lot more flexible in a variety of environment types, where they're flying in the air in a large space. And of course ...warehouses: we've actually been doing them a lot. So they work really well. Probably one of the challenging environments is always low light. If the lighting is bad, just the sensor doesn't work very well, just use the camera. Also, lots of the repeating patterns, is a chronic kind of challenge in computer vision applications. But we have ways to address that. - Before we sign off. Is there anything else about CupixWorks 2.0 versus Matterport for Construction Professionals you feel we didn't cover today? - Just another aspect is the pricing component. The tune we've been hitting on all day is flexibility and customization; depending on your project needs. The same goes with our pricing model. It's not a one size fits all. So depending on the size of your project, the number of captures you're going to be doing, pricing can scale to that level. So it really makes it flexible for users depending on the type of projects they're working on. - Awesome! Gannon, thanks for being my guest on the show today. - Yeah, I really appreciate talking. -- - We've been visiting with Gannon Wilder. Gannon is Product Manager at Cupix, he's based in Denver, though Cupix is actually headquartered in San Jose, California. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. |
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107-WGAN-TV: WGAN-TV: CupixWorks 2.0 versus Matterport for Construction Professionals with Cupix Product Manager Gannon Wilder (@Gannon_Cupix) | Thursday, 17 June 2021 Video of CupixWorks SiteView Demo CupixWorks 2.0 Compare Side-by-Side of Weekly Construction Documentation Video of CupixWorks BIM Compare CupixWorks 2.0 Compare Side-by-Side of BIM to Weekly Construction Documentation Transcript: WGAN-TV CupixWorks 2.0 versus Matterport for Construction Professionals (AEC) Hi All, Transcript below ... WGAN-TV CupixWorks 2.0 versus Matterport for Construction Professionals (above) with Cupix Product Manager Gannon Wilder (@Gannon_Cupix) that aired today, Thursday, 17 June 2021. This WGAN-TV show is for: 1. Architects 2. Engineers 3. General Contractors (large projects) 4. Building Owners 5. Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) teams 6. BIM teams 7. Construction Professionals This show discusses how CupixWorks 2.0 compares to Matterport for: 1. Reducing Site Visits 2. Reduce Reworks 3. Track Progress 4. Prevent Disputes Cupix Product Manager Gannon Wilder @Gannon_Cupix) also discusses CupixWorks 2.0 integrations, including: 1. Procore Integration 2. BIM 360 3. PlanGrid Integration If you researching Matterport and potential competitors in the AEC space, this WGAN-TV show is for you! I asked Gannon to show and tell us about the CupixWorks 2.0 3D tour viewing experience (compared to Matterport) and how CupixWorks compares to Matterport for: 1. creating as-builts (including exporting to CAD) 2. Side-by-Side: weekly construction documentation 3. Side-by-Side: construction documentation versus BIM model 4. large spaces 5. collaboration (including real-time) 6. site view examples 6. reducing rework 7. dispute resolution among project stakeholders 8. annotation 9. issue tracking 10. field reports 11. building's lifecycle: design, field Operations and handover 12. tight spaces, crowded spaces and dark areas 13. Side-by-Side: Aerial 360 within a Cupix 3D Tour? 14. Side-by-Side: comparison on aerial 360 to BIM? 15. BIM overlay (example) BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) | IFC (Issued for Construction) 16. BIM and point cloud deviation analysis (coming soon) 17. AutoDesk Construction Cloud Integration | AutoDesk Build | AutoDesk Take Off | AutoDesk BIM Collaborate 18. Procore Integration 19. PlanGrid Integration 20. How are RIFs handled? (Requests for Information) 21. 3D measurement 22. 3D annotations 23. CupixWorks Getting Started Hardware Kits 24. LiDAR support I also asked about: 1. shooting (including time to capture; outdoors and which cameras) [single Shot, Multi-Shot, Video] 2. processing 3. hosting 4. viewing 5. backup/storage 6. pricing 7. 3rd party integrations Among my questions: I am the general contractor for a 25-story, 500,000 SQ FT office building renovation. I am considering CupixWorks and Matterport to shoot weekly construction documentation (as-built digital twin). 1. How long does it take to scan this building weekly for CupixWorks? (how)? 2. Using CupixWorks, how does our team compare: BIM to actual weekly construction documentation? 3. Using CupixWorks, how does our team compare: week-to-week construction documentation? Thanks to Gannon Wilder (@Gannon_Cupix) for being on the show today. I hope to have Gannon back to give us a tour of the Cupix backend content management system. Thanks to Gannon Wilder (@Gannon_Cupix) for being on the show today. I hope to have Gannon back to give us a tour of the Cupix backend content management system. Best, Dan Cupix Links ✓ Cupix Website ✓ CupixWorks 2.0 Landing Page ✓ Cupix LinkedIn Profile ✓ Cupix Facebook Page  Image courtesy of CupixWorks Website  Image courtesy of CupixWorks Website Transcript (video above) - Hi All. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, June 17th, 2021. And you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. We have an awesome show for you today: CupixWorks 2.O versus Matterport for Construction Professionals. And here to talk to us about it is Gannon Wilder, Product Manager for Cupix. Hey Gannon, good to see. - Hey Dan, thanks for having me. - Gannon, how about we jump in immediately with a demo that shows CupixWorks BIM versus actual. - Yeah, well essentially what Cupix does is, we enable you to take the small 360 cameras, walk around in a variety of different modes to capture a site. So we have a lot of unique algorithms of how we're capturing and processing the data. - Awesome, Gannon, let's cover that. But let's first do the show so we can see what it actually looks like and then we'll talk about how you capture it and the magic. Cupix got so much magic just on this one screen of being able to show a BIM model versus a Google Street View-like experience that I think that's the place for us to begin. And then we'll talk about how you do this magic. - Yeah, okay then, we have a lot of stuff to show today, but one of the powerful features we built within CupixWorks is the ability to align your virtual floor within a BIM environment. And so this is a fully navigable space. It's not just a rendering of the model. You actually have the entire live model built in. So as you navigate the space you can see the overlay of duck work and built walls. Just like in BIM, you have a variety of layers turned on. So this one I think is actually without the interior wall layer, but this essentially lets you compare as-built documentations at a certain point in time with the design model. - Anything that you can do in a BIM model can be turned on and off? So if you want to look at Mechanical, Electrical Plumbing , you can do that in your BIM model within the CupixWorks player. - Yes. So you're going to upload it -- an entire full BIM model -- and then as you are going to turn on or off layers to be able to see specific areas you're interested in. - Okay, and then what we're looking at on the left side is the actual 3D tour. So if you're actually walking through this space that's been captured in a point in time. - Exactly and you're able to capture by video by walking through the site or in more traditional methods of where you stop, take a 360 panorama and move forward and we're able to track the position within it. - Okay, could we walk a little bit more through the space? And it just automatically syncs to the BIM? - Yeah, as you can see we're just moving through the facility. - Awesome! Talk to me about the map that we're looking at, the floor plan, the 2D floor plan in the bottom left, please. - Yes. Within CupixWorks the viewer is built for managing any variety of projects. So we actually can filter by layers and the specific project, we have just a single layer but if you have a multi-floor building, this drops down and you can actually see multiple levels. So you can easily pop between different levels of your plan and then also easily track your position within that layer. - So can I walk through this space by clicking on the floor plan on the bottom left? - Yes. As you see, I can click and navigate in completely different areas as you're moving around. Every single 360 panorama is oriented within full six degrees of freedom within the 3D space. So within the 2D model or 2D plan and also like the BIM model. - So you can click anywhere there was a 360 Panorama that was shot or just click on the actual space to walk through it. - Correct. - Okay. I think I see some annotations in the space. Can you point out what we're looking at on the left side? - Yes. I can just turn on that view to see more detail of it. Yes. You're able to track issues, RFI tasks within the space and they're all tracked. You can see I'm spatially on the map with you. So you can see where different areas are tagged and you can go, actually navigate to that specific area. You can also see it from the list view and navigate from the list. And just while we're here, we can note that we do have several integrations with Procore, PlanGrid and BIM 360. So you can also pull data or push data from these systems and track it spatially where it's located on a 2D map. - So, there's a seamless integration with, I think I heard PlanGrid, Procore. Was there another one? - PlanGrid, Procore and then BIM 360. - And BIM 360. So if the architects, engineers, general contractors building owners -- if they're using any of those existing platforms -- they seamlessly integrate with CupixWorks? - Correct and really, the power that we enable is, we're not primarily an issue tracking system. We give you the ability to spatially contextualize these issues on your site. So instead of only just looking at a 2D map floor plan, or just a static image, you can go to the issue, click on the issue, open it up, navigate fully around that environment to understand this issue. And we also give the capability to track what's been going on with this issue over time, because people are typically scanning -- maybe on a weekly basis -- maybe every two weeks or once a month. We have a list of multiple times this site is captured. If I can't quite figure out what's going on in this photo, I can maybe go to the month before and automatically notice the transition was not in the same spot exactly. It's maybe five feet away from each other, but we automatically can detect the nearest pano to your location. - A pano being a panorama 360 photo. - Correct, yes, 360 imagery. - So, could you give us a comparison of weekly construction documentation? In my mind, I'm thinking about a 25-story, 500,000 SQ FT office building that needs renovation. We're doing --- a potential client is considering either CupixWorks or Matterport to shoot weekly construction documentation and take advantage of the platform's features. Could we look at a weekly construction documentation comparison? - Yeah, definitely. So beyond being able to just navigate within a single view to different points within the timeline to see progress. You can actually see them compared side-by-side. And as I mentioned before, we automatically find and detect where the nearest imagery is. So the capture locations may not -- you don't have to manually sync them between dates. You just capture the entire floor on one day, capture the entire floor on the second date and others are able to sync together. - Okay. So it may be hard for our viewers to see the label in the bottom/middle but that is a date of when the CupixWorks 3D tour was taken and then another date of the same space. So this would be an example of maybe either comparing weekly construction or monthly construction documentation? - Correct and it enables you to track progress of a specific location throughout your entire site and it gives you that archival and contextual awareness throughout the entire project. - Okay, awesome. So forgive me, I interrupted you at the beginning of the show. You were starting to talk about how imagery is captured for this. I think this is the context to be able to see BIM compared to actual or actual compared to actual in terms of progress. How do you actually create the imagery that's used in the CupixWorks platform? - Yes. One of the big strengths of CupixWorks is, we have actually a variety of methods for being able to capture a site. They all start with just the simple 360 camera. So we work with [many of] the different 360 [cameras]. You can see our list [www.Cupix.com] but essentially, walk around this iOS app on a -- most of the time an iPhone. You can use an iPad as well to capture a site. Now you essentially have -- - So for clarification, you're using either an iPhone or an iPad in order to run the camera but it's actually the camera that's capturing the image? - Yes. So we only -- our algorithms specifically only deal with 360 imagery and our app enables you to capture it a couple of different ways. So we have like high resolution HDR methods, where you stop, stand still, take a capture and then move around and then we're able to stitch each location together. And that's a similar concept to what a lot of Matterport users do, that there'll be familiar with: different tripod locations going around, except this can be handheld -- held in really in any orientation, even if you stick it out to the side, stick it through a window or stick it through a shaft, an elevator core. We're still able to orient the navigation and each image so that you're looking at it -- correctly. - Okay, let me go a little bit slower with you. As capture is really an important feature of CupixWorks. So it's device agnostic. So any 360 camera can be used to capture imagery for CupixWorks. - Several. Many 360 cameras can be used. - Many? Is that because the Cupix app that works on iOS only works with certain 360 cameras? - The behind the scenes of why working with different cameras. It's always calibration issues and things that ... So you have to do a lot of work to add a new 360 camera. - Well give us the short list. What's the short list of under thousand dollars, 360 cameras that are compatible with CupixWorks? - The primary cameras we work with are the Ricoh Theta line of cameras. - Okay Ricoh Theta V, Ricoh Theta Z1, Ricoh Theta SC2. - We specifically work with V and Z1. - Ricoh Theta V and Ricoh Theta Z1. Okay. - And then another one that we really enjoy using is the MADV 360 camera. It's not as well known but it works really well for our purpose. And our entire camera kit with the [MADV] is just like $300 to get started. - Okay, we'll come to pricing later but any additional 360 cameras presently supported by Cupix? - When we also work with Insta360. - Okay so, Insta360 ONE X2, Insta360 ONE X. Insta360 ONE R. - The ONE R and the ONE X: those two. - Okay and, but not the X2. - Correct. - As of today. - As of today. - As of today, Thursday, June 17th, 2021. Okay, great then, and I believe you can use other cameras, but really, in terms of a fast, efficient workflow, these are the cameras we're really talking about. - In terms of, I don't think we really allow integration with other cameras. So primarily just that list of four cameras. - Okay and let's take the Ricoh Theta Z1E: a thousand dollar camera. three ways to use it or four ways? - Essentially, there are four ways to use it. And I have just a quick little video just showing people. - That'd be great. - I can pull that up for you. And essentially there's a couple methods. First, there's the single shot. That's where, for every capture you have a floor plan on your phone. You just select where on the floor plan you are. And then it just takes a static image and actually, through different capture modes, we also have different ways to hold the camera. You can, as in this video, use a monopod or some kind of pole like that. You can use just a handheld selfie stick to hold it. Many people have a camera mount on their helmets. I think this one actually shows it. So here you can see you have a camera; the camera attached to your helmet. And this is primarily used in video mode where it's easy -- you don't even have to hold anything in your hands. You can just click, go with the video and walk through the site. And just recently we did start supporting a different method to capture. Lots of our customers were using this way on our site. So we're starting to make this a little bit more public now but actually allowing you to capture via a drone. So mount the camera on the drone and fly it, which is good for getting different perspectives of your site and for exterior views of the building. - On the drone, do you still need to maintain connectivity with an iOS device? - Drone workflow is a little bit different: so no, you do not. You capture the data separately, and then we have a different way to upload the data into our servers. - Awesome! And that 4th method, I see Cluster Shot. Can you explain that? - Cluster Shot is what would be most familiar to Matterport users. It's where you take a series of individual shots and then it's a different type of algorithm than a video where you're walking fluidly. This -- you could essentially -- have the camera in any angle, around any variety of pieces of equipment and things like that, and take high resolution captures that way. So typically, most of our users do some combination of video shot and Cluster Shot on their projects. - So, I imagine there's some trade offs and reasons. When do I want to use a single shot? Perhaps I am just moving a tripod or I'm just holding up a selfie stick with the camera, versus having a video captured. - People like video and Cluster Shot because these are automatic processes. It allows them to just quickly place, capture throughout a site and move quickly. Single Shot could be for people who want a lot more control and where their images are taken and they're maybe not taking as high volume number of captures. So perhaps you're happy just having a single shot in each room and you just want to place one imagery location in each room in the floor plan. So you can go in there; snap one and then walk out. Whereas if you do a Cluster Shot or video, you're frequently capturing probably multiple shot images as you're walking into the room and then walk back out. - Is there a trade off of the quality of the imagery of doing single shot versus video? - The highest quality imagery relates to using single shot and also Cluster Shot. Each of those, you're taking a single frame from the camera and we also have HDR modes. So you can do the HDR modes that are built in with these devices. With video, it's captured as a time-lapse video. So two frames every second and those videos do come in at a little bit more image blur; a little bit more exposure setting issues. So the videos are not as clear as single and Cluster Shots. - So I imagine that if I am interested in speed of capture, particularly with weekly construction documentation, if I'm talking about a 25-story, 500,000 SQ FT office building under renovation, I probably want to be in video mode. And I likely don't really care as much about the image quality. And so the speed of capture. Does that sound like when I would want to be on video mode? - Yeah, and we really find people like a hybrid of both methods. So whether many times for large areas or areas where you don't necessarily have or need as high resolution then, you do the video shot because you can capture it so much faster. But then for maybe key locations, really complicated areas where you want to get a lot of detail, then you switch over to Cluster Shot to be able to capture those key locations. - Okay and the single shot might be, oh, the building's ready to be delivered. It's got all these nice finishes. You really care about photography. Then you might move to HDR single shot in order to capture the space towards the conclusion of the project. - Correct, yeah. So yes if you want more control over the site or you just want just a more simple method, yep, single shot, you're able to capture it that way. - Do you have any estimates on how long it takes to do a capture? Ah, look at this, great. - Yeah and you can see the difference is about 20X, depending on the environment. So everyone's familiar with site capture, but the complexity in the environment is always a huge factor. So here we're comparing open warehouse space or maybe an outdoor location compared to an environment, maybe like an office building or complex industrial facility or factory that has lots of rooms or lots of equipment you have to move around. So the fastest method is the video shot and we have customers doing a multi-hundred SQ FT facility on a weekly basis. So they do a lot of video, just put on the helmet, walk around and we've seen about 750,000 SQ FT an hour. And that's just walking at a steady pace and video shot. Many times we say you walk like you have a hot cup of coffee; so you never want to be too abrupt in your movements but just a smooth and steady pace. - So I am literally tingling looking at this slide because I'm either in amazement or disbelief. So I need your help. I need to understand a little bit more. Let's stay on this slide just for a moment: on open warehouse space using video, 750,000 SQ FT. Can I even walk that fast? I mean, is that, and I'm thinking I, when I do rows of walking that kind of have the imagery connected, I probably can't be more than what, five to seven feet away or? Help me understand. So if I was doing Matterport for example, which Matterport officially supports up to 10,000 SQ FT, officially supports up to 200 scans. I think they would probably push back and say, well, we have a way we can do a hundred thousand or 200 or 300, 400,000 SQ FT, but it probably max is out there and you may or may not be successful actually completing your scan. So these CupixWorks numbers are really incredible, in terms of capture. I just want to see how best we can make it apples-to-apples comparison. So if I'm doing 750,000 SQ FT, is that based on the fact that I'm walking briskly and I'm doing a row every five to seven feet to my left. - So it works a little differently in that, you don't necessarily have to have the spacing, parallel, between parallel lanes. If you're zigzagging, doing a little lawnmower pattern through a facility, you don't have to stay within five feet or 10 feet of each lane. Typically, I'm looking back and actually I can show an example in a little bit. I think they're doing one in each bay. So it might be 20, 30 feet for each path but we're tracking the linear path that the person is walking. - And will that still create a three-dimensional model that I can walk from, let's call it scan-to-scan-to-scan: scan-to-scan? Even though I was in lane one, I now can walk to lane two even though it was shot some distance away. - Yes. So you're able to navigate or pull a 3D virtual space. If you have a model - a 3D model -- uploaded to your project, it's automatically located within that. If not, we're just automatically located within a floor plan. - So looking at this slide, I can't overemphasize this, because this really just blows me away looking at it. Even if we go to many small rooms using video and capturing 35,000 SQ FT, I would say maybe a Matterport photographer could do 35,000 SQ FT, maybe 2,000 SQ FT an hour. So, essentially this is saying it's at least [17 Times] the speed of Matterport. And I think if I was in the AEC space, one of the questions I'd want to ask Matterport is, "Hey, officially, how many scans do you support?" "Officially, how many SQ FT does Matterport support?" So that you get that in writing, because, every time in the We Get Around Network Forum somebody who runs into a problem doing Matterport to do large space, it's because eventually Matterport comes back and says, "well, we don't actually support tours that are bigger than 10,000 SQ FT ... and, 200 scans," even though their salespeople will tell you, "[Matterport] can shoot 300,000 SQ FT, 400,000 SQ FT without a problem." So get it in writing. That would be a great question to ask. So even doing 35,000 SQ FT for Matterport, even if it was possible, do 2,000 SQ FT an hour, that's still about 17 hours compared to one hour. Am I making this up here? - ... That's one of the huge aspects, is most of the people on site -- many times they're not even capturing for a full hour each week. They might go walk around for 30 minutes, capture their site, come back to the office and they're done for the week. - Yes. We've spent a lot of time on this slide because it is absolutely that important. If you are an architect. You are an engineer or you are a general contractor, you probably understand that the most expensive part of capture is actually the [time of the] person who's doing the capture. So if you can capture in an hour with CupixWorks versus Matterport -- that might take 17 hours and struggle to actually process the model -- that's crazy! - Yes. That's not the only aspect: the speed of capture is one and also the scale of a site is another. We don't have any limits on the number of images or number of captures we have on a site or even square footage. We have some facilities that are very massive. I don't know the numbers but just these massive developments going on -- and we're able to load them all up and render them. It's pretty exciting! - And in terms of capture -- so let's say we are talking about a million SQ FT. We'll go back to my example, a half a million SQ FT: 25 stories and a half a million SQ FT. Does that have to be captured by one person or could five people all take a floor or take five floors of that building? - Yes. It is possible to merge captures from multiple devices or multiple people together and then have them all synthesized in our viewer. So you could have, if you want to break up the work a certain way, you could have people -- - With a 25-story building, five people each doing five floors. But I think what I'm even hearing is 500,000 SQ FT for CupixWorks is not really a big deal for someone to walk the entire space every day or every week or every month, whatever's needed in terms of construction documentation. But I asked because with Matterport, you can't merge floors from different cameras. You can use a different camera. You can switch from a Leica BLK 360 to a Matterport Pro2 to a Ricoh Theta Z1 in the same shoot. But it must be one model that's shot. So you don't have the ability to have five different people all work on the same space in order to get the documentation done sooner. Maybe we're talking about a space that has people and you're limited by certain hours and therefore you need to have multiple people do the data collection so you're not capturing during office hours or mall hours, for example. - Yes. And that is a benefit of CupixWorks, is if you have multiple people; different cameras. Typically what we see is -- maybe you have one person tasked with -- "Hey. You need to capture every week at a specific time." And you can go and capture the video; just walking around the site. And then other people that -- as issues come up or as key locations need to be tracked; "Hey. We have these three spots that we really want high resolution images. Can you go and do that? And, so they might use a different camera; or a different method; video method versus Cluster Shots method but essentially you're able to merge all of it together into our viewer. - I think when you were describing Cluster Shots, the interesting thing there is -- if you needed closeups of mechanical or plumbing, electrical, it's up in the ceiling. You literally can! Or, around the boiler in order to capture depth data. You can just move that camera anywhere. That's really not possible with Matterport. You can't, in a practical sense, put the Matterport camera up into the ceiling, let alone tilted at some angle. So that seems like a tremendous advantage of CupixWorks, when you've got odd spaces that need to be captured, particularly mechanical, electrical, plumbing related spaces. How about outdoors or any issues with capture outdoors? - No limitations with outdoors because we're primarily only using it, it's just a standard 360 camera. We're not dealing with the infrared type of depth sensor, like Matterport has. So there's no limitations based on the infrared light. - So if you were interested in doing, let's say the top floor that's under construction and there's no ceiling and the sun is pouring in, doesn't affect CupixWorks capture in any way. For Matterport, I guess if you're in the AEC space, the question to ask Matterport is, "Help me understand the difference of a 360 View and the 360 Scan and help me understand what's the difference of the walk-around experiences and help me understand what I can measure and can't measure. Because there's -- I think what Matterport would probably say is, "Oh! No! You can shoot outdoors. That's not a problem, you just use a 360 View; but again that doesn't allow the measurement I'm going to -- I could imagine with CupixWorks, no matter how you capture the data, you still can measure three dimensionally within the model. - Yeah, that's correct. With Cupix: two aspects. So with the lighting, the only effect that the lighting has is similar to all cameras; just making sure that exposure is right. If you are going between a really dark place or a really bright space, just make sure -- just in video mode, it doesn't adjust as well as an individual shot mode does. - Okay. All right. So I've come out. I completed my 360 photography. Let's say I did my video: 25-stories, 500,000 SQ FT. So an office building. Okay, how do I get it into the CupixWorks platform? - It's similar to the traditional process people are familiar with for Matterport. You just simply upload the images; upload the scans to our servers, our cloud processes it. Our turnaround time is, at max 24 hours. So typically, if people scan their construction project one day, they get it the following morning. Yes. And then from there you have it in your viewer and you can sort by dates, sort by levels and navigate your entire project. - Okay. So I'm hearing 24 hours but I think I heard something else too. If it's by the end of the day, maybe I'm done on my job site, it's 6 or 8 PM. Is there a reasonable expectation that I might wake up in the morning, be in the office 8 or 9 AM -- be on the site 8 or 9 AM -- and it's ready? So is the commitment level 24 hours but typically, it's still ready overnight for most of us in the United States. - Correct. Yes. So max time that we kind of guarantee you and promise is that 24 hours, average times are much faster than that. - Okay. So what I just suggest for our audience who might be thinking, "Oh. I'm looking at Matterport, but I heard of CupixWorks. And I'm trying to understand the difference. Again, I would ask the Matterport rep, "if you have a model of 500,000 SQ FT?" The short answer is -- it's just not possible with Matterport -- but let's say it was a 100,000 SQ FT that you broke up the building into 25 models. You now have maybe 50,000 SQ FT or a 100,000 SQ FT. Ask the question, "how long does that take to process?" --- (Continued below ...) (Continued from above ...) --- Because you might be surprised that it doesn't come back in 24 hours and it might take two days or three days, but there's certainly no commitment level that I'm aware of. Matterport to say we guarantee that we will process your model within 24 hours of that size. - And one aspect that we also provide to our customers is after all the algorithms are done processing, we always have our customer success rep look at each model to QA it and to make sure that we're delivering a good result back to you. And so we have people -- our customer support team actively working with our customers and making sure that they are able to capture their projects. - So this is interesting, Because Matterport just processes the model automatically and sends it back. I think I'm hearing something slightly different here: our process is automated. But that said, if there is an issue, we actually have a QA quality control person that's actually looking at it before it gets delivered in case there needs to be some cleanup or adjustments. - Exactly. And there's -- because you're dealing with people; with a camera on their helmet, they're walking around a site. Sometimes they just walk too fast or whip around corners, things like that. And so that's a situation where there are four frames where you ran around this corner, they kind of broke and they're not oriented the correct way. So we'll fix it for you and then we get the feedback, but next time try not to do that again. And so that's the benefit, is we're able to work with our people to have success on every project. - Awesome, okay. So the model has been processed. Talk about hosting. Cloud hosted. And is it ... can I host it on my own server or does it need to be cloud hosted? And if so, what's the security? - That's definitely one of the benefits of CupixWorks, is we give you a lot more flexibility, in terms of data ownership, owning your data, in terms of where it's hosted, if you use AWS. If you have high security constraints, you can use private AWS servers. There are government approved AWS servers. So there are a lot of options for you to own the data. Download the data or control it at the end of a project or make sure it's on approved locations during the project. - And is there offline hosting as well? - There's no offline hosting but there is an aspect for our enterprise level customers. Many times, the site documentation needs to be preserved for many years after a project. You are allowed to download the data to keep it in a secure file for archival. And then we do have an offline viewer to be able to access it. But if you ever need to spin up that project again, say for example, we have many people using us through the pre-construction, during construction and the handover. So I guess more to facility management and over the entire life cycle of the building, if you're using it more from a facility management perspective, then you need to use the hosted version online. - Okay, so let me see if I can break this down a little bit. So a typical client understands AWS, Amazon Cloud. Totally happy: know that it's reliable, secure and it's accessible. But if I'm a super-large client and I have my own Amazon Cloud and I want the data hosted in my Amazon Cloud, that's okay with Cupix? - Correct, yeah. We can set that up for enterprise level customers. - Okay. So Matterport doesn't do that. So if you are looking at Matterport, ask your rep every which way to Sunday, "I have my own Amazon Cloud. I want it hosted in my cloud. And if you get an answer, "Yes. Please get back to us in the We Get Around Network Forum because as far as we know, that's never, ever happened. Second, in terms of ownership and use of the data. So does Cupix take any ownership in the data? Does it use the data for any other purpose? - So that is another aspect of this industry: people want to control their data. People want to control their projects. There is a huge liability; these huge projects online. So we have it that customers do control their data and completely own their data. When they shut down a project or remove it, we don't have access to it anymore. So we do require them to save an offline copy. - And does Cupix create derivative works from the data? - There is an option that customers can opt into to allow us to use their data for R&D purposes. Much of that is our research related to all the algorithms, which is doing the processing. - But that's an option if customers want. - Yes. You can opt in. So if, if you are in the AEC space and you're comparing Matterport and CupixWorks, one of the questions you want to ask your Matterport rep is, "I understand that the user agreement allows Matterport to create derivative works from the models that we upload to the platform." And probe on that and if they say, "that's not the case." Get that in writing. Because Matterport does create derivative works from Matterport tours and uses that in other ways and sells it in other ways and is likely to use it in APIs. So something to ask. It's likely that you'll get the answer that you own the copyright in your work, but the fact is, the copyright, your work can only be displayed within Matterport. There's no offline hosting. So something to probe is ownership of data. Let's talk a little bit about password control and access. I think I want to ask this a little bit differently. It's an open-ended question. Tell me about the CupixWorks collaboration. - Yes. We understand that on an active project, you have many different levels of people operating at many different locations or areas within the project. So we actually have a very detailed hierarchy of permissions in terms of groups of types of people that are allowed to view it. How much access they have. Whether it's view only. Whether it's view and comment. Or whether it's editing the project as well. For example, we have owners who want to have access to the entire project, but if you're a general contractor and perhaps you're using this tool for your coordination meetings, you can give out access to CupixWorks to all of your individual subcontractors. But perhaps limit that by a specific level. So only a single floor of a building. You could even limit access by specific dates. So only give them a date window in which they're allowed to view. So there's many different options for controlling the levels of how much detail they can see; what they're allowed to do with that information; and then who can use it. So we have a very robust system specifically designed for the AEC industry. - So what I would suggest anyone that's interested in just thinking about Matterport versus CupixWorks, ask your Matterport rep about collaboration because [Matterport] collaboration is super-limited in terms of the admin of it or I've given someone access to annotate and unless something's changed recently, that's about it. So all the different granular descriptions, Gannon, that you've described for CupixWorks is just not even an option with Matterport collaboration, access and permissions. I think CupixWorks has some collaboration features in terms of real-time and annotation. And maybe, could you talk a little bit about that for CupixWorks? - Yes. The annotation feature -- we showed a little bit of that earlier -- The big aspect that we enable is, in many ways, just a standard issue tracking. Standard logging of questions, tasks, RFIs, but what really makes it unique is that spatial component. Being able to navigate it within a 2D model, within a 3D model, knowing exactly where these issues are, go and jump in and look around. And the one other benefit is, we do have a lot of deep BIM integrations. So depending on which, we have active integrations directly with BIM 360, PlanGrid and Procore. But if you're working with say, some facility management software or some other system, we can actually export all this data in what's called the BCF format, which is a new BIM specific industry format for maintaining all the metadata of the information, as well as the spatial location. So you can move it in and out of our system. - BCF, BIM Collaboration Format. - Correct. - So it sounds like -- if you're trying to make a decision between Matterport and CupixWorks, one of the things to ask your internal team is which platforms are important to us. So if PlanGrid, Procore and BIM 360 and perhaps yet other BIM related solutions that can integrate with BCF, is to ask Matterport, what integrations they have. Because, when I look at CupixWorks, one of the things that strikes me; it's a living three-dimensional model that allows for annotation by any trade to document problems, challenges and to easily pinpoint it within a three-dimensional model as opposed to, "Oh. I've taken a photo and I've emailed it off to someone." Do you want to talk any more about how that annotation fits into reducing site visits or reducing rework or tracking progress or preventing disputes? - Yes. I mean, the biggest thing is really just providing all the information in one place. So having a single hub that can act as, like you said, your living, breathing, as-built documentation. Another popular term is the digital twin. So really documenting the history of all these issues within the space. You have the timeline of issues over time, of the photos over time. A couple other things that I'll mention. We also have, when you bring up the concepts of a BIM, we essentially understand the site at like three different levels. We understand it on the level: what floor are you on at time. What point in time are you looking at? And you can also look at the concept of rooms, which is an area or a grouping of information. So on a large project, you can have a table of, if you have a BIM model and you import your Revit model, it can automatically extract the names and an area of different rooms. So this is another way for you to manage or quickly navigate to specific areas. "Hey. I want to go to this classroom and see what is happening here and separately..." - Gannon, forgive me, the print is so small. I am having trouble with it. Could you just, in a big picture, describe the columns and the rows. - Yes. Here on the left is the list of rooms. So, this is the same concept in your BIM model or floor plan. You have different room names. I think if I make this map bigger, we can see that in a second. And then to the right is, this is the time-lapse aspect. So overtime, a capture on June 4th, a capture on July 19th on September 13th. So you can go to a specific date and time and a specific level. - And how hard is it to find that annotation in a specific room on a specific date? - If you know the name of a space, you can just type it in and query and it'll just find it right here. So we even have a search bar. So if you know you're looking for specifically mechanical room 105 -- or anything -- you just type in MEP 105 and you can find that; query it. See what dates you have captured. In this case, we have all dates captured. It's possible you might have a capture; a couple of times but not every time. - Yes, so when you called up that specific room, it called up the 3D tour and BIM models for that room. And now I imagine with those, either those tabs at the bottom, the labels at the bottom of each 3D tour, that you can change the date or in your information panel at the right, select one of those markers by date to take you there. So it looks like you have two ways to get there. - Yes. You have many ways to get there. You can search by the name in the search bar. Go to a specific room. You can pick a date in the table view. Pick a date in the main view. So it really depends on -- even how you like to think. You're in a project and you're just thinking, "I want to get to this area." We make it easy to navigate that section. - And can you just take us through the annotation and either point out if that's PlanGrid or if that's that part of the Cupix native platform for annotation? - Yes. So within the native application for annotations, we have the ability to even create templates or groups. So depending on the type of projects you're on, you can even have preset forms. So if you need to go through a facility to do an inspection, you have a preset form of questions. So you can set that up within your template. So you can go through an area, select one of those questions, fill it out and do that quickly. And really in terms of how it syncs, whether using Procore or PlanGrid, it kind of all syncs the same way as you add the annotation, it tracks a location. And let's say that you're able to take those notes. - And so those notes, I think at the highest level, are about reducing site visits: Inspect. Measure. Annotate. I think we'll take a look at that in a second, reducing rework. Tracking progress. Preventing disputes at the highest level. That's what this level of detail is about. - Yeah, it's true, however, you're really managing your project. It gives you that option to do it that way. - Before we take it off screen share, I just want to pause for a moment. So again, if you're in the AEC space and you're trying to make a decision, you've heard about Matterport, kind of the gorilla in this space, more investment perhaps but nevertheless, you've discovered CupixWorks and you're trying to compare CupixWorks 2.0 versus Matterport. What Gannon is showing us here is side-by-side, either side-by-side weekly, monthly, daily construction progress or side-by-side with BIM. Ask your Matterport rep, "if you can do that." Short answer: No, you can't. There's no side-by-side comparison in Matterport of anything like this. And if you find that little mini-map on the left side helpful for navigation, Matterport does not offer that solution for navigation. Now that said, there's something called the Highlight Reel in Matterport. Does CupixWorks have thumbnails within the tour to jump from place-to-place? - There are concepts that are very popular; like construction tools like Navisworks that are called viewpoints. So we don't have viewpoints in that way, where you can curate a list of views. Though, typically when people do that it is just when you share a model, you can share and create a new link. So whenever you create a new share link, it actually saves that view. So if you want to send a specific view to someone, you can do it that way or potentially through an RFI, through annotation. - Okay, and in the collaboration, is there anything like Skype or excuse me, Zoom? Is there anything like Zoom meets CupixWorks built into the platform? - No video conferencing aspect. The main aspect is for asynchronous communication. Going back and forth between comments and annotations. You can see who's actively in a model to get multiple people in a model at a time. You can see that. But for the most part, the purpose is to share and communicate about an issue. - Okay so, the safety person may annotate a model overnight. Asynchronously give direction about things on the job site that needs to be dealt with now. - Yes. That's definitely a viable use case. - And you mentioned a couple of things earlier in terms of unique captures -- or ways. And I think you just mentioned can you go above the ceiling? And this is really just a perennial problem or challenges. It's very hard to document these complex spaces and in typically healthcare facilities, you're only allowed to access things. It has to be very secure and sealed, through something like this to prevent dust and contaminants from getting into these sensitive labs. And so in this capture, you can see the entire floor plan recapture the entire wing of a facility, but in this one specific room, they wanted to develop a ceiling. So we actually had that as a layer. So we're able to capture the floor plan and then come up through here. And where's the hole at the bottom? Oh there it is, there. So you can see, you're in this sealed barrier and with a long extension pole, essentially be able to stick the camera in different angles and see the space. So you can see there's not even much room around here. And there's a corner right here. Just to illustrate this a little bit more. And this is what we say when we have it in 3D, is we actually have the exact orientation of each panorama photo of this above ceiling space. So each 360 photo is tied into the exact location. - So is there a layer that I can say, "Show me anything above seven feet?" - Typically how this is oriented is just the level of feature. So you can go to the below ceiling or the above ceiling level. - Great, okay. That's amazing itself, certainly Matterport does not offer that. - Yes. And documenting environments like this are near impossible. - Yes. I would say you could probably do this in a Matterport tour using a 360 camera and set it on a 360 View, but good luck in terms of having it show up in the right place and having to deal with manually moving the location of that 360 to actually be in the right place. - Correct. And that's what enables this type of capture, is that Cluster Shot, where you can take a series of individual shots and then it's a unique algorithm that we do, where we can fit them all together in the correct position. - Okay. I did ask you about the Highlight Reel and you answered about how you could just share a specific link. But I think that what I think of as a mini-map, the 2D schematic floor plan on the left, I would imagine everyone in AEC in the construction space is just used to reading floor plans. And that's probably the most natural way in the AEC space to navigate the space and quickly go to a specific place, and I'm guessing on this little mini-map in the bottom left, gives me a choice of floors, is that I could say, I want to be on floor two, floor three ... So, or maybe that's what I'm changing; the floor for the tour. The mini-map is automatically changing as well. - Correct, so whenever you switch, you can see we're at the entire hospital floor now, once I switched onto the bottom floor versus when I switched to the above ceiling, you just see that reflected ceiling plan. So we actually can. Projects have dozens and dozens of floor plans. So you can upload multiple floor plans, multiple construction documents, multiple 3D models to the site and cycle between them as needed. - And does the 360 panorama, each one of those dots representing the 360 panorama? Does it show up on this floor plan automatically? Or does somebody actually have to put the 360s in the right place? - Yes. And so as this magical love of the algorithm, is we have it set. It requires a floor plan to start with. So you start with the floor plan, but once you have that, we're able to -- - So where does that floor plan come from? That comes from the client who has a floor plan and just simply uploads it. And then is this the algorithm or is this the quality control person or a little bit of both? - The very first time you start a project. So the very first time you have to start up the floor plan and when you import it, there's a couple of steps in a wizard, just to import it. But once you have that set up, then the algorithm automatically locates it within the floor plan. So just while you're capturing, you say I'm on floor one, I'm on floor two. And then if they are able to fit its location within that map. - So how does the camera or the Cupix iOS app know where it is in the floor plan? Are you telling it when you capture to say, "Hey. This is where I am on the floor plan. - There's a couple of quick questions; a manual input that we request. For example, if you're doing a video walk through a floor plan, you say, "This is where I started," just to give it an initial constraint but then after that, it's completely automatic. - That's awesome. Gannon, what I love about you showing this piece to me right now is -- "Well, of course, this is how it works." But anyone who's trying to make a decision about Matterport and CupixWorks, should take those shots from this show and say, "Hey. Look Matterport sales rep. I'd like to see your mini-map of the 2D schematic floor plan showing where I am within the space." And the short answer is Matterport does not offer that. - Yeah, and that's one of the aspects of -- from the beginning and we built this from the ground up for AEC users to be used in construction and the design process. And ours is less of a highly polished marketing tool. Instead, it's a very robust and functional tool that integrates with a lot of BIM software; construction software. - Let me go back for a moment to the hosting. We talked about that there's an offline storage version and there is a viewer. So it sounds like with CupixWorks, if you needed to have the model offline, do you still get the full viewing, robust experience? - So the offline model is primarily a kind of archival and compliance capability. So, it's not as much for active projects. It has limited functionality. So the offline viewer is able to save the floor plans and all the imagery. So you can still navigate, move around but none of the other functionality works. So it's primarily just reviewing once a project is complete but that's more of a niche use case. - That's fine and then would I still use that offline archive to upload again to Cupix if I needed to restore that model for use? - Yes. If you ever wanted to restore it and turn it into an active project again, you can reactivate a new license of Cupix and yes, upload it. - Okay and then talk to me a little bit about backup. So it's in the Amazon Cloud. Is it, if I needed, if I needed to add to a model I can add to a model. - Yes. It's all the redundancies and backups and capabilities I would expect from a cloud software. So there's multiple safety layers. - So someone who's particularly interested in backups and security and privacy. Obviously as CupixWorks more on that topic. I think that the questions to ask with Matterport is to say, "please explain the backup process with Matterport." Because I would tell you that there really is no practical backup process. Matterport will explain how you can save files on your iPad through a very convoluted process but one would think you would just upload it to the Matterport cloud. And if you ever needed to download it, you could. And the short answer is, no Matterport doesn't offer that. And there is no practical Matterport backup or offline with the exception, as Matterport enables the downloading of a model to an iPad. But once it's down on the iPad, you don't have any way to actually share it or do anything with it. And I think the other piece to probe with Matterport would be offline archive because there isn't, you can, and there isn't any practical way to store stuff. And there isn't any practical way unless you literally save your iPads. And every time you shoot a project, once you fill up an iPad is to go buy another iPad. Or I could explain to you, in fact, I'll just simply send people to the, We Get Around Network Forum: WGANForum.com and use the search box for "Warning Will Robinson" or "backup" or "restore" And that'll take you to a lot of discussions on this crazy topic of Matterport backup and restore: really just horrible. And they know it, it's something that the We Get Around Network Forum Community has documented probably for seven and a half years of what's the backup and restore process should be. Happy to hear with CupixWorks, at least you can archive it and have it and then you have all these methods for backup in the cloud. In terms of, on your website, www.Cupix.com www.Cupix.com there's a discussion about cameras and kits. Can you tell me a little bit about CupixWorks kits? - Yeah, essentially we allow, as I mentioned before, a variety of capture methods. And it's all just to provide ultimate flexibility. - Do I buy my own Ricoh Theta Z1 or Cupix to load me up with the gear that I need based on the project that I'm about to begin doing? - If you have a camera and a selfie stick, essentially, you could use that and that is fine. Most of our customers don't have to think about that or go find things on the market. So we provide pre-bundled packages depending on their needs. So we have a variety of cameras available, bundled along with things like external battery, external lighting for unique, low light environments. Different options are, there's the helmet mount, if you want to do the walkthrough quickly. Sometimes there is an extended pole that can go up to 15 feet. If you're trying to get high up, maybe above ceiling, maybe above tall equipment, what else? Yes. Those are the main options. So essentially short selfie-stick. Long pole. Helmet. Drone mounts. Those are some of the options that we give people. - Okay. So I think what I'm hearing is a little bit different than Matterport. Matterport will tell you what cameras are compatible, go buy it. And if you're in the AEC space and you're looking at CupixWorks and you define what the project is, Cupix will put together the kit for you of the gear that's necessary to shoot it. So you don't have to think about "well what is it that I need?" It all comes in a kit. - Yes. And we have some guides to be able to let you know which kit items you need. And really, we're built around flexibility: whether you want to put on a drone; whether you want to walk around with the video; your individual shots. So we have people documenting shipping containers or submarines to just standard construction sites office spaces. So now running the gamut really. - Which kind of, it diverts me a little bit, but it's such an interesting question. So on a submarine, I could imagine there's a lot of security issues. When the imagery gets uploaded to Cupix. Do you have any access to see what's being processed? Do your customer support people? Can they see the tour? You mentioned that there are quality assurance people that are -- sound like they're looking at the tour to do something. But I imagine that some clients don't want anybody looking at anything. Period. End of story. Could you talk about that? - Yes. So the default for our users is to let our customer success manager view each model and to help provide feedback and guidance and be that second set of eyes as a QA. So you don't have to worry about that kind of thing, but we do have the option to opt-out of that and make it so it is a secure pipeline, so we can't see it. So you can opt-out of that QA process. So it's only the algorithms processing it and then you get the information directly. - So it's possible to say, I don't want anybody to see this. And does that meet some level of security by people who think about that kind of stuff? - Yes. So that typically kind of falls within this enterprise level of customer that needs intense security or privacy requirements. And so this is typically bundled with things like their own private cloud servers that they're using for data storage, controlling who has access to it. So we essentially built this platform to be very enterprise friendly. So whatever your requirements are, we have an option for you. - Okay, LiDAR support. - Yeah, so primarily, Cupix is -- in terms of the type of processing that we do -- is we use 360 cameras to document a space. And like we mentioned, however you hold it; there's the helmet; or a drone walking around. That's fine. But beyond that, our viewer is very robust and can hold all your project data; so we can have your floor plans, your BIM models, your 360 imagery data and also LiDAR data. So whether you're using terrestrial scanning or have I mobile mapping LiDAR, you can upload that onto our servers to be able to host it all together. So similar to how you have compared to the BIM model, that you can also view point cloud data; take measurements from it. If you want to house all this data in one location. - Okay, awesome. How about in terms of exporting data? At the top of the show I mentioned a 25-story, 500,000 SQ FT office building going through renovation. That's really at the beginning; there are no construction documents that exist for this old building. We really do need an as-built. Okay. We go create this three-dimensional CupixWorks model. Other features for exporting in order to bring it into a BIM model to begin, whether it's Revit or SketchUp or other CAD programs to begin with the as-built? - At this time we do not provide any deliverables like that, like a 3D point cloud or a 3D mesh from our model. So there are no outputs you can download directly from our captures. So we primarily use, if it's more like a sparse map. So we know the position/location of each image within it. And so we build a map that way and it's scaled and dimensioned correctly. And that's what enables some measurements as well. But it's basically all behind the scenes. It's nothing that you can download or view directly. - A bigger question: can I use Cupix for creating an as-built? - Not for creating a floor plan. So if you need to create a floor plan, there are a variety of methods that you can use. - Okay, but there's no export in a three-dimensional CAD file today with Cupix? - No. You typically recommend the best practice is that you already have a floor plan that you can use, even if it's outdated. So something that's similar; that is ideal. Occasionally you can come in with no floor plan and still create a capture. But the outputs that we create do not allow you to create a floor plan from it. - Okay so score one for Matterport. We've been visiting for an hour and 15 minutes. This is actually the -- I think the first time that we've hit something that Matterport has something today better than CupixWorks, which is you can export a MatterPak. You can order a Matterport MatterPak: The point cloud files and a variety of other files that can then be converted to CAD programs. This is actually the first time I think we've actually hit on something that Matterport is actually better though, if we're talking about a 500,000 SQ FT space trying to create an as-built with Matterport, good luck. Because you probably have to break it into 50,000 to 100,000 SQ FT spaces and shoot multiple models. And maybe you can do the math faster than I can. If it takes two hours to shoot. It takes an hour to shoot 2,000 SQ FT with Matterport and it's 500,000 SQ FT building. How many hours? - I wasn't, I didn't catch the numbers thrown out. - Hey Siri, 500,000 divided by 2,000. - [Siri] 500,000 divide. - It's 250 hours. So it would take 250 hours, I should ask Siri how many days that is. It's too massive a project to even think about it. Okay, again, and we've covered a lot of ground. Before we sign off, is there anything that we didn't cover today about "Building Smart" with Cupix? - Yes. There's one more kind of visually interesting thing I could show, related to that drone capture. Like we mentioned, we keep talking about flexibility, flexibility, flexibility, how you capture, types of spaces you capture. So our algorithm is able to work in a variety of environments, even in the air mounted on a drone flying around. So this was a 250,000 SQ FT facility that did a nine minute drone flight on. And we have the same -- some of the same capabilities that related to having -- having it synced with your BIM. So if you're trying to understand what is documented on the roof lines, the equipment is installed in the correct location. You can look at that. So it's just one more option that we kind of give you. CupixWorks handles the whole spectrum of needs your project might have. So I just wanted to bring that up. And I think earlier you did mention too, like warehouses and what type of patterns you walk in a warehouse. So, here you can see, this is the floor plans. So you can just see the whole lawnmower pattern of just zigzag walking around the space and you can see how it's going to be built out in the future. So here, it's actually in the wall. - Yeah, this is an interesting space because if you had to do this space with Matterport -- again, if you're in the AEC space -- you're trying to make a decision between Matterport and CupixWorks. Ask your Matterport rep specifically, "how that empty warehouse space gets shot?" And asking them for some type of guarantee regarding success. Because I bought my Matterport camera in July of 2014. And I can tell you, and I'm the Founder of a Community of a ton of Matterport Service Providers. I think our knowledge base I'm looking at is 84,000 posts among 14,000 topics. And a lot of the discussion is about large spaces. A lot of the discussion is about large open spaces. And this is exactly the kind of space that is super-challenging for Matterport to capture because Matterport infrared is looking, is trying to map the space and the whole space looks the same. If you're far away from those posts, then you have a shiny floor and the ceilings too far for Matterport camera to know where it is. This is a really super-difficult space to do with a Matterport Pro2 3D Camera. Yes. You could use a Ricoh Theta Z1 and there'll be a crazy workflow around how to use that. But the short answer is, if you have spaces, open spaces like this, super-hard, probably almost impossible really to do with Matterport. I guess you could do it using s |
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