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History of Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down, and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly “Victorian” in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify, and the idea of “books for the millions” was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition—publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible, and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life & Times
Moby Dick

On the face of it, Moby Dick is simply a story about a whaleboat captain intent on killing a white whale that had previously maimed him and destroyed his ship. As a result, Herman Melville’s masterpiece was underestimated when first published in 1851.

In truth, Melville was exploring themes relating to belief systems and moral and ethical topics; the story itself was merely a vehicle by which Melville could address his philosophy. To that extent, Melville viewed the novel as a means of accessing the minds of people who might not ordinarily pick up a book about the kinds of issues he felt driven to discuss. Ironically, those same people entirely missed the allegory, and Moby Dick was perceived as nothing more than an adventure novel.

As a consequence, Moby Dick, although initially successful, was quickly forgotten, and Melville reached old age an unsung talent. Today the novel is hailed as one of the greats, after the book was resurrected in the wake of World War I. The story was seen as timely and illustrated what can happen when desire for vengeance is allowed to take control. By the close of World War II, the book had become symbolic of the struggle for power between nations.

Melville is now described as a romantic novelist, because Moby Dick evokes a bygone and masculine age, when men risked their lives on the oceans in the procurement of whale products. The eponymous whale, Moby Dick, is an albino male sperm whale. Sperm whales are toothed whales specialized to feed on giant squid, making them extremely dangerous to harpoon and kill. To a whaler, the male sperm whale was the ultimate adversary. Sailors used to carve designs and pictures into sperm whale teeth as trophies, which were sold as pieces of scrimshaw.

Sperm whales were particularly prized by whalers because their heads contain reservoirs of a substance called spermaceti oil, creating their bulbous foreheads. This oil was used by humans as fuel oil and many other substances used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The oil had a high value until similar substances were derived from crude oil instead, thereby sounding the death knell for whaling.

For the whales themselves, the oil assists with their ability to dive to great depths in search of prey. It was this behavior that made the confrontation scenes in Moby Dick so thrilling, as the whale would dive for long periods, leaving the whalers in tense anticipation of what might happen next. Then the whale would suddenly erupt from beneath to wreak havoc on the wretched humans.

The whale, of course, was in its own environment, while the people were entirely reliant on technology to remain alive. At that time in history, the high seas were the most challenging places for people to live, so Moby Dick was the ultimate “man against the elements” tale.

While the main characters in Moby Dick are Christian Americans, the others comprise a world population in microcosm, encompassing many races and creeds. This has been interpreted as Melville juxtaposing Christian mores alongside those of a non-Christian mindset.

In the end, the narrating voice Ishmael is the sole survivor, clinging to flotsam after the whale has gone. It becomes apparent that the whale is representative of Melville’s idea of the Christian God. It has punished those who do not believe, and it has punished those who believe too much, for the obsessive Captain Ahab has perished with his crew.

Ishmael is representative of the moderate Christian—the meek who inherits the Earth, one might say. He came along for the ride and remained unharmed while hell raged around him, protected by his faith.

This premise is largely the reason the book became a classic in the American canon, because it is interpreted as a cautionary tale and a fable. The moral of the story is that those who keep their heads down will triumph in the end.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville found inspiration for Moby Dick by sailing on a whaler to the Pacific Ocean in 1841–1842. He then went AWOL from his ship and lived among the natives on the Marquesas Islands. After a number of weeks he boarded another whaler and traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii. He eventually returned to the U.S. mainland in 1844.

Melville was displeased at witnessing Christian missionaries in Hawaii forcing their faith on the natives, who had their own beliefs. Although he was a Christian himself, he saw that extreme righteousness was ethically questionable. This was the seed for Moby Dick, which questions the virtues of extreme beliefs.

Before Moby Dick, Melville had published a number of novels alluding to his seagoing adventures, but he never made a great deal of money from any of his work. During the writing of Moby Dick, he became a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated the book.

Melville spent the remainder of his working life as a customs officer for New York City. By the time he retired, few people remembered his past as an adventurer and novelist. He became an alcoholic, but his wife stuck by him and helped him recover. In sobriety he struggled with bouts of depression until his death at the age of seventy-two. It had been almost forty years since his writing career had ceased, but that hadn’t stopped him from continuing to write for his own pleasure.

In a way Melville’s own journey from adventurer, to novelist, to obscurity is part of the legend. Because he never tasted real success in his own lifetime, it is tempting to wonder what he might now think about the literary legacy he left behind. After all, Moby Dick is now regarded by some as the best American novel ever written.

CONTENTS

Title Page

History of Collins

Life & Times

Chapter 1: Loomings

Chapter 2: The Carpet-Bag

Chapter 3: The Spouter-Inn

Chapter 4: The Counterpane

Chapter 5: Breakfast

Chapter 6: The Street

Chapter 7: The Chapel

Chapter 8: The Pulpit

Chapter 9: The Sermon

Chapter 10: A Bosom Friend

Chapter 11: Nightgown

Chapter 12: Biographical

Chapter 13: Wheelbarrow

Chapter 14: Nantucket

Chapter 15: Chowder

Chapter 16: The Ship

Chapter 17: The Ramadan

Chapter 18: His Mark

Chapter 19: The Prophet

Chapter 20: All Astir

Chapter 21: Going Aboard

Chapter 22: Merry Christmas

Chapter 23: The Lee Shore

Chapter 24: The Advocate

Chapter 25: Postscript

Chapter 26: Knights and Squires

Chapter 27: Knights and Squires

Chapter 28: Ahab

Chapter 29: Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb

Chapter 30: The Pipe

Chapter 31: Queen Mab

Chapter 32: Cetology

Chapter 33: The Specksynder

Chapter 34: The Cabin-Table

Chapter 35: The Mast-Head

Chapter 36: The Quarter-Deck

Chapter 37: Sunset

Chapter 38: Dusk

Chapter 39: First Night Watch

Chapter 40: Midnight, Forecastle

First Nantucket Sailor

Mate’s Voice from the Quarter-Deck

Second Nantucket Sailor

Dutch Sailor

French Sailor

PIP

French Sailor

Iceland Sailor

Maltese Sailor

Sicilian Sailor

Long-Island Sailor

Azore Sailor

PIP

China Sailor

French Sailor

Tashtego

Old Manx Sailor

3rd Nantucket Sailor

Lascar Sailor

Maltese Sailor

Sicilian Sailor

Tahitian Sailor

Portuguese Sailor

Danish Sailor

4th Nantucket Sailor

English Sailor

All

Old Manx Sailor

Daggoo

Spanish Sailor

Daggoo (grimly)

St. Jago’s Sailor

5th Nantucket Sailor

Spanish Sailor

Daggoo (springing)

Spanish Sailor (meeting him)

All

Tashtego (with a whiff)

Belfast Sailor

English Sailor

Old Manx Sailor

Mate’s Voice from the Quarter Deck

All

PIP (shrinking under the windlass)

Chapter 41: Moby Dick

Chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale

Chapter 43: Hark!

Chapter 44: The Chart

Chapter 45: The Affidavit

Chapter 46: Surmises

Chapter 47: The Mat-Maker

Chapter 48: The First Lowering

Chapter 49: The Hyena

Chapter 50: Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah

Chapter 51: The Spirit-Spout

Chapter 52: The ‘Albatross’

Chapter 53: The Gam

Chapter 54: The ‘Town-Ho’s’ Story

Chapter 55: Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales 269

Chapter 56: Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes

Chapter 57: Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars

Chapter 58: Brit

Chapter 59: Squid

Chapter 60: The Line

Chapter 61: Stubb Kills a Whale

Chapter 62: The Dart

Chapter 63: The Crotch

Chapter 64: Stubb’s Supper

Chapter 65: The Whale as a Dish

Chapter 66: The Shark Massacre

Chapter 67: Cutting In

Chapter 68: The Blanket

Chapter 69: The Funeral

Chapter 70: The Sphynx

Chapter 71: The ‘Jeroboam’s Story

Chapter 72: The Monkey-Rope

Chapter 73: Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him

Chapter 74: The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View

Chapter 75: The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View

Chapter 76: The Battering Ram

Chapter 77: The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Chapter 78: Cistern and Buckets

Chapter 79: The Praire

Chapter 80: The Nut

Chapter 81: The ‘Pequod’ Meets the ‘Virgin’

Chapter 82: The Honour and Glory of Whaling

Chapter 83: Jonah Historically Regarded

Chapter 84: Pitchpoling

Chapter 85: The Fountain

Chapter 86: The Tail

Chapter 87: The Grand Armada

Chapter 88: Schools and Schoolmasters

Chapter 89: Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish

Chapter 90: Heads or Tails

Chapter 91: The ‘Pequod’ Meets the ‘Rose-Bud’

Chapter 92: Ambergris

Chapter 93: The Castaway

Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand

Chapter 95: The Cassock

Chapter 96: The Try-Works

Chapter 97: The Lamp

Chapter 98: Stowing Down and Clearing Up

Chapter 99: The Doubloon

Chapter 100: Leg and Arm

Chapter 101: The Decanter

Chapter 102: A Bower in the Arsacides

Chapter 103: Measurement of the Whale’s skeleton

Chapter 104: The Fossil Whale

Chapter 105: Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will he Perish?

Chapter 106: Ahab’s Leg

Chapter 107: The Carpenter

Chapter 108: Ahab and the Carpenter

The Deck—First Night Watch

AHAB (advancing)

CARPENTER (resuming his work)

Chapter 109: Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin

Chapter 110: Queequeg in His Coffin

Chapter 111: The Pacific

Chapter 112: The Blacksmith

Chapter 113: The Forge

Chapter 114: The Gilder

Chapter 115: The ‘Pequod’ Meets The ‘Bachelor’

Chapter 116: The Dying Whale

Chapter 117: The Whale Watch

Chapter 118: The Quadrant

Chapter 119: The Candles

Chapter 120: The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch

Chapter 121: Midnight—The Forecastle Bulwarks

Chapter 122: Midnight Aloft—Thunder and Lightning

Chapter 123: The Musket

Chapter 124: The Needle

Chapter 125: The Log and Line

Chapter 126: The Life-Buoy

Chapter 127: The Deck

Chapter 128: The ‘Pequod’ Meets the ‘Rachel’

Chapter 129: The Cabin

Chapter 130: The Hat

Chapter 131: The ‘Pequod’ Meets the ‘Delight’

Chapter 132: The Symphony

Chapter 133: The Chase—First Day

Chapter 134: The Chase—Second Day

Chapter 135: The Chase—Third Day

Epilogue

Footnotes

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1
Loomings

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 coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town 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 White-hall, 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 honourable 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 shipboard—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 honour, 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 forecastle 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 AFGHANISTAN.’

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.