Redburn: His First Voyage - Cover

Redburn: His First Voyage

Copyright© 2025 by Herman Melville

Chapter 21

A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN

The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he had shipped as an ordinary seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed his duty very well.

When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by his intimate acquaintance with the monsters.

“They ar’n’t sperm whales,” said Larry, “their spouts ar’n’t bushy enough; they ar’n’t Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn’t stay up so long; they ar’n’t Hump-backs, for they ar’n’t got any humps; they ar’n’t Fin-backs, for you won’t catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar’n’t Greenland whales, for we ar’n’t off the coast of Greenland; and they ar’n’t right whales, for it wouldn’t be right to say so. I tell ye, men, them’s Crinkum-crankum whales.”

“And what are them?” said a sailor.

“Why, them is whales that can’t be cotched.”

Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very hard. And ever after, Larry’s judgment was relied upon concerning all strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any other class of seaman.

This was Larry’s first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to “blubber-boilers,” as they contemptuously style those who hunt the leviathan. But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise have encountered.

He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages. And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy Indian Ocean.

“Why,” said Larry, talking through his nose, as usual, “in Madagasky there, they don’t wear any togs at all, nothing but a bowline round the midships; they don’t have no dinners, but keeps a dinin’ all day off fat pigs and dogs; they don’t go to bed any where, but keeps a noddin’ all the time; and they gets drunk, too, from some first rate arrack they make from cocoa-nuts; and smokes plenty of ‘baccy, too, I tell ye. Fine country, that! Blast Ameriky, I say!”

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