There you have them, three savage races, under the American flag, the maniac captain, with their great keen harpoons, ready to spear the _White_ whale.
And only after many days at sea does Ahab's own boat-crew appear on deck. Strange, silent, secret, black-garbed Malays, fire-worshipping Parsees. These are to man Ahab's boat, when it leaps in pursuit of that whale.
What do you think of the ship _Pequod_, the ship of the soul of an American?
Many races, many peoples, many nations, under the Stars and Stripes. Beaten with many stripes.
And in a mad ship, under a mad captain, in a mad, fanatic's hunt.
But splendidly handled. Three splendid mates. The whole thing practical, eminently practical in its working. American industry!
And all this practicality in the service of a mad, mad chase.
Melville manages to keep it a real whaling ship, on a real cruise, in spite of all fantastics. A wonderful, wonderful voyage. And a beauty that is so surpassing only because of the author's awful flounderings in mystical waters. He wanted to get metaphysically deep. And he got deeper than metaphysics. It is a surpassingly beautiful book. With an awful meaning. And bad jolts.
It is interesting to compare Melville with Dana, about the albatross. Melville a bit sententious.--"I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below I ascended to the over-crowded deck, and there, lashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal feathered thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked Roman bill sublime. At intervals it arched forth its vast, archangel wings.--Wondrous throbbings and flutterings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some King's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible strange eyes methought I peeped to secrets not below the heavens--the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.--I assert then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell----"
Melville's albatross is a prisoner, caught by a bait on a hook.
Well, I have seen an albatross, too: following us in waters hard upon the Antarctic, too, south of Australia. And in the Southern winter. And the ship, a P. and O. boat, nearly empty. And the lascar crew shivering.