Brona's Books: Moby-Dick Chapters 121

It's hard to believe, but after 6 months and 3 weeks, we are now into the final week of our #slowread #MobyDickReadalong. I'm going to miss this book. A lot.

Before I get all nostalgic and sentimental, I will jump into the next lot of chapters. Surely, this is the week we will finally confront Moby-Dick face-to-face!

Ch 121: Midnight - The Forecastle Bulwarks (Stubb and Flask mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over the anchors there hanging.)

The storm continues.
It would seem that Stubb is disconcerted with the thought that they could be tying up the anchors, never to be used again.
Flask is philosophical and berates Stubb to 'be sensible.'
He, in turns becomes philosophical 'I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.'

Ch 122: Midnight Aloft - Thunder and Lightning (The main-top-sail yard - Tashtego passing new lashings around it.)

In contrast to the philosophising Stubb and Flask, we have rhyming, sing-song Tashtego who simply wants the storm to stop and a glass of rum, 'um, um, um!'
The shortest chapter in the book?

Ch 123: The Musket

Starbuck's reckoning.
A loaded musket tempts him to kill the sleeping Ahab 'shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?'
He thinks about his wife and child waiting at home, the consequences of mutiny and how this action would make him a murderer. After 'wrestling with an angel' he replaces the musket and asks Stubb to wake Ahab instead.

Ch 124: The Needle

The morning sees the storm easing and the sun trying to come out. However the electrical energy of the storm has affected the magnetic force of the compass needles.
The Pequod now has no quadrant, no compass and the anchors have been tied up.

Their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate.

Ch 125: The Log and Line

Another tool to help a ship measure it's progress at sea.
Ahab spontaneously decides to test it, even though he has barely used it during the entire cruise.
The Manxman is concerned that the line has deteriorated from heat and moisture.
Ahab is unconcerned.
The line snaps.

'I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the log-line.'

Science is broken.
Ahab turns to more madness and prophecy.
He calls Pip to him and claims the abandoned child as his own 'Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth.'

'Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings.'
A human touch amongst the madness.

Ch 126: The Life-Buoy

The crew are 'startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly - like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts.'
Is it the 'voices of newly drowned men in the sea' as suggested by the Manxman?
Ahab laughs at the superstitious talk and tells everyone it's only the seals who inhabit the nearby rocky islands.
Although, of course, sailors also have superstitions about seals!

Their human look, their peculiar tones, 'seals have more than once been mistaken for men'.
Another reminder that mankind is not that far removed from the animal world.

But then we lose our first man.
Up 'til now, the crew of the Pequod have survived intact, if you can call Pip's mental state after his accident, intact.
The first watch in Moby-Dick territory falls from his perch, perhaps he was not fully awake?
The life-buoy is flung out, but the man is gone. And so is the buoy.

they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged.

The life-buoy needs to be replaced.
Queequeg volunteers the use of his coffin.
Starbuck calls the carpenter to make the coffin water-tight.

Life and death go hand in hand.

Ch 127: Ahab and the Carpenter (The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the open hatchway; the Carpenter calking its seams; the string of twisted oakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of his frock.—Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip following him.)

The carpenter gets annoyed at Pip and Ahab's mad ramblings and philosophising.
Ahab sees the coffin as an immortality-preserver for the soul into the next world.

Ch 128: The Pequod Meets the Rachel

The Rachel has seen the white whale, but they have lost a boat crew in the hunt. On board the boat is the Captain's young son. He is desperate to find his son and appeals to Ahab as a father, to help him search for the missing boat.
The Manxman claims that the wailing sounds from last night were the cries of the drowned crew.
But Ahab is undeterred, 'Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time.'
The Pequod presses on.
The Rachel is last seen yawing 'hither and thither at every dark spot.'

You plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.

Ch 129: The Cabin (Ahab moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow.)

Ahab now also abandons Pip, for fear that Pip's madness will somehow cure his own.
Ahab acknowledges that he needs his madness to continue this quest.
Pip is confined to Ahab's cabin.
Pip's madness is about loss of self 'Who's seen Pip?'
Ahab's is about too mush self.

Ch 130: The Hat

The crew are feeling the strain. Silence, fear and misgivings. The worked like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck.
Fedallah does not appear to sleep and Ahab stands in his pivot-hole.
He eats in the open air and has stopped shaving. They stand side by side, but do not talk.
After 3 or 4 days with no sightings of the whale, Ahab begins to be distrustful of his crew's fidelity.
He decides to be the first to spot the white whale himself and has himself hoisted up to the royal mast.
He has only been aloft ten minutes when a red-billed savage sea-hawk makes off with his hat.