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If I was to keep a record of every turn of the half-hour-glass on board the Pequod, I should not get this narrative clear of Nantucket-harbour; so the writing of my last will and testament, which, besides, did not figure again, would only make my MSS an intolerable sprawl. It is an appendix of an appendix, and to be considered as such.
Pip had rung two bells by the time I had pen and paper to hand. I could have made out my will in the forecastle, but having spent a night catty-corner to the first mate while I nursed my spleen at him, I had the urge to speak confidentially to my comrade - an urge which on a whaler was so unattainable as to be almost perverse. Insist on your free-will as much as you like; consider yourself an isolato of your own thoughts; before you should even be reminded that you are part of a joint enterprise by any duty to spring to, there are the various leisures, quarrels, accidents and necessities of your fellow-men to draw you in.
Queequeg pointed out that the blubber-room, being still virginal at this point in our voyage, would be quiet for a little space - till three bells, at least, and by then we might take what sleep we could. No lighting being spared for a sleeping blubber-room, I was obliged to declare myself of sound mind while writing out a legal document in the dark. The first item was the most speculative, being the 300th lay - which, should the voyage fare but poorly, or I fall sick and be treated from the captain's box of medicaments and sundries, could amount to a bill of debt to my poor legatee instead of a boon.
I squared away all the contents of my poor carpet-bag, of which the best were that remainder of Queequeg's own earnings after our bills were settled, a jackknife, a morocco-bound volume of Edmund Burke, which did not seem to my comrade's taste, and my sturdy monkey-jacket. Being a brawny sort of fellow myself, I flattered myself it should fit Queequeg as well as I, although he disagreed heartily.
"Why, Queequeg," I said, "if my jacket sha'nt fit you, I shall certainly have to be the bold fellow to spot Moby Dick if I am to be square with you!"
That hyena-ish mood of the dawn still being over me, I declared very philosophically that I would consign my entire person over to my friend in death if I could - for gazing long enough down from the bowsprit at that vigorously teeming life below, you realise that a drowned man passes very rapidly into a sort of generalised fishy dyspepsia; and even prepared, trussed, and cosseted to be delivered in a mail-package to eternity in a hammock, how readily the parcel-strings of that package can be gnawed open!
Furthermore - viewed from the prospect of toolishness, my body in its offices of a ship-steerer and a rope-splicer was fairly consumed and snaffled up by the good Captains Bildad and Peleg and those thrifty Nantucketers whose dollars were safely returned to them by my labours, return myself though I may not.
Given that I had never in my life set out to be a benefit to sharks, nor did I feel quite as warmly inclined to the ship-investors in death who I would have served excellently in life, I might as readily use up that case in service to a bosom-friend, and rather than make an empty white slab on the walls of the Bethel, be entombed in some kindly and intimate spot closer to home.
(I should state at this point, that I had nothing in mind of the terrible events which had befallen sailors in extremis; for it would be an absurdity to state an affidavit upon a body in such a situation; that flesh being the very definition of a Fast-Fish.)
I finished my exordium, having taken, I thought, a very liberal and broad-minded outlook on these such questions through my reveries at the mast-head.
My poor friend had half that look of having before his tongue a broad rush of protestations and ideas, which, bottle-necked on the two-thirds share of English, had jammed fast; and half a look of very sincere horror.
I had been accustomed to fling out to him the most wild and fantastical sallies when we should take the same watch together, or chat up in the rigging, with a kind of unthinking confidentiality that I did not take with any other being; for, what would have made a dead uproar in a Manhattan school-room would only flavour Queequeg's rejoinder with a little salt. In short, I was alarmed that I had shot so far wide of my aim as to deal a blow to that characteristic stoical and half-humorous philosophy of his.
At last he spoke to me, still with that earnest countenance, saying - should I suppose some swaggering fellow of a naval officer - some gallant of the English wars - some man like that, having sent volley after volley of a broadside to strike men down in scores, having sighted down with a musket at the wounded wretches who were left and dispatched them quicker than a fisherman at a shoal of sunfish, having in this very advanced affair cut men to pieces with his sword, and then set a fire to the foredeck to smoke the survivors to death - would you ask that man, having been well pleased to serve his country and cause by acting thus, to treat his wife in this self-same manner? - the English evidently being attached to such practices?
I was sincerely sorry, and began to say so, except that he took hold of my shoulder with one hand and asked very earnestly, if I meant to tell him I thought his generosity a kind of purchase-price, that this was nothing of the sort, that if I considered any rights to have been arrogated to him by virtue of a measly and insignificant money-bag - all this I interrupted by throwing myself upon him.
I fairly grappled him to me, it pricked me so much that I should give him such a false report; and being poorly served for words, only kissed him for some space before making out in between that I meant to share his fortune and misfortune alike just the same; that had I thirty dollars in my pocket, we should both live as high as English whalers on it together for a spree ashore, and we should run through it in three weeks for flip and chowder for the pair of us.
Well! I am sure these seem but mean horizons for a promise - but consider how many a man promises the moon, the stars, and God knows what other mundane and celestial bodies to his sweetheart seems to me to have but little intention of delivering them; and I was all certainty. There I was apportioning my goods to my dear comrade should I drown, and at once telling him how we would land up safe in three years' time, and that Yojo might let him choose the next direction we should take; which should certainly be together.
I assured him again, that I had no intention of ever asking him again or considering that he might perform such a detestable office as I had suggested; and having, I think, understood the kindly intentions which had pulled me so far askew, he looked at me very amiably and asked, if I had meant anything in particular by having us make my will together in a dark blubber-room without other companionship.
By way of the whole running and management of the whale-ship, such conferences being occasioned is very rare, being only a little easier in arranging practically than a gam. The whole nature of ship-board discipline, alongside the commodoreship of the Law, is contrary to them also, although, Ahab considering the behaviour of his crew largely in light of the hunt for the White Whale, did not take much heed to consider any immorality about their leisure.
And there I had managed to sequester myself with Queequeg only to talk of my eternal rest for a good fifteen minutes, and leave fifteen or so only before we should be back to our places! We understood each other very well on this point; and I was keeping up a murmur of talk, only to keep ourselves confidential, and with a hurried hand I was helping Queequeg get sufficient of that sea-soaked clothing off from us.
Yes, I say, I had that good fifteen minutes, and the three bells in mind all that time; and Queequeg too had a care for that; and the whole soughing and creaking and chattering of the ship, and the life of every other man on board which we had only narrowly and briefly cut ourselves loose from - and this may be accounted a dashed-off rapid sort of affair, I suppose!
Well, I say, it is a great joke to be thinking of winding a large house-clock at such crucial points, but I was not prey to Locke's chain of associations - only the sort of constraints that us poor mortals are under! The grey-eyed Athene lassoed Dawn's fine and fiery steeds to hold back the dawn from any rude interruption to King Odysseus and his queen, but being not that sort of island-royalty, that perpetual timepiece did not suffer one hiccough in its mechanism for us.
Indeed: can anyone count themselves so entirely free that they might never have to consider one thing, apart from their joys? Were the whole mirror of eternity, and the generations of the Leviathan held up before even the languid amours of a Solomon or a King Charles II, what a very petty scuffle they should look!
As for delight, that is not compressible by the half-hour-glass; a few moments are a few drops of pond-water, that you could turn over by microscopy and find teeming with a thousand impressions. In those three-bells is a measure of all the sweetness of this life, which we may only find in its narrowness; that half-hour glass is a sort of distilling glass, whereby our laboured loving breath is condensed.
And as for my fortune, the 300th lay was a mite enough, indeed! but had I been promoted to a first mate or been the commodore of the fleet, I should have been equally blessed, for a 25th lay of that voyage's profits would have enriched me just the same amount.
Ah Bildad, ye high-handed Quaker! Bildad, ye preach so very precisely and astutely! For - although I fear ye gained not much comfort by this, when the word came to ye - all your Quakerish musings were the sweet water of truth! Verily, Bildad, verily, Aunt Charity, thou gavest me grave advice - thou wast thinking, surely, only of my innermost soul - for cash I may have gained on many whaling-voyages since, but my treasure is all laid up in heaven.