Herman Melville: Moby Dick

CHAPTER 40: Midnight, Forecastle. (continued)

SPANISH SAILOR.
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

DAGGOO (SPRINGING).
Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!

SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM).
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!

ALL.
A row! a row! a row!

TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF).
A row a'low, and a row aloft--Gods and men--both brawlers! Humph!

BELFAST SAILOR.
A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge in with ye!

ENGLISH SAILOR.
Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard's knife! A ring, a ring!

OLD MANX SAILOR.
Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad'st thou the ring?

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!

ALL.
The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.)

PIP (SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS).
Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal yard! It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of the year! Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they go, all cursing, and here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em; they're on the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But those chaps there are worse yet--they are your white squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but spoken of once! and only this evening--it makes me jingle all over like my tambourine--that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him! Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!