The Lamp and the Lance

Old Sag-Harbor had a problem with Jonah.

Not a spiritual problem. A logistical one. His Bible showed Jonah's whale with two spouts — a Right Whale's anatomy — and a Right Whale's throat is too small to swallow a man. "A penny roll would choke him," the fishermen say. Sag-Harbor also noted that Jonah was swallowed in the Mediterranean and deposited within three days' journey of Nineveh, which sits on the Tigris, nowhere near any ocean a whale could reach in seventy-two hours. He had other objections too. He was thorough.

Melville engages all of them. Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is ready: Jonah might have lodged in the whale's mouth, not its belly. A German exegetist suggests a dead whale, a floating refuge rather than a swallowing. A continental commentator proposes that the whale was simply the name of a ship. Another that the whale was "a life-preserver — an inflated bag of wind." And the Cape of Good Hope route, though it would require circumnavigating Africa in three days, was advanced by a Portuguese Catholic priest "as a signal magnification of the general miracle."

Poor Sag-Harbor, Melville concludes, seems "worsted all round."

And then, at the very end of the chapter, as if to settle the matter: "To this day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah. And some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris's Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honor of Jonah, in which Mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil."

Full stop. Next chapter.

The Turkish lamp doesn't explain anything. It doesn't answer Sag-Harbor's objections about whale anatomy or Mediterranean geography. It simply exists, burning, without oil, and Melville offers it without comment as if the offering is sufficient.

Because it is. That's the argument.

Sag-Harbor's error isn't that he doubts. Doubt isn't the problem — Nantucket whalemen are empiricists by trade; they trust what they've seen and distrust what they haven't. The error is what his doubt forecloses. Melville calls it "foolish pride of reason" and "abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy" — language that's deliberately overblown, almost comic, but not entirely joking. The rebellion isn't against priests. It's against the attitude that can hold a lamp burning without oil and not need to explain it away.

The next chapter — Chapter 84, "Pitchpoling" — doesn't mention Jonah or Sag-Harbor or the lamp. It's about Stubb.

A running whale: one that's been harpooned and is fleeing at full speed, pulling the boat behind it. You can't haul up alongside a running whale; it's too fast. The only option is to lance it from distance — to throw a twelve-foot steel-and-pine spear forty feet from a violently rocking boat moving at speed, with enough accuracy to hit the "life spot," a target the width of a hand.

This is pitchpoling. Melville calls it the finest of all whalemen's techniques. "Small sword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like it."

Now watch Stubb do it.

He stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand... Then holding the lance full before his waistband's middle, he levels it at the whale; when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand, thereby elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. — Moby-Dick, Ch. 84

Whistling. Stubb does this whistling.

"Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful leash." And then: "The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches the monster die."

Folds his hands.

Melville doesn't connect these two chapters. He doesn't say: and here, in contrast to old Sag-Harbor's proud reason, is Stubb. He doesn't need to.

Sag-Harbor has every objection in order. He knows Right Whale anatomy. He knows Mediterranean geography. He has thought about it carefully, and his conclusion is that it couldn't have happened. What Sag-Harbor cannot do — what his pride of reason has made impossible for him — is fold his hands and watch the monster die. He has the analysis. He lacks the posture.

Stubb doesn't know if the whale can be killed this way. He doesn't calculate whether the throw is possible. He coils the warp, balances the lance on his palm, and throws — and the lance goes exactly where it needs to go, and the whale spouts red. He's not reckless; Melville is careful to note that he "glances twice or thrice along its length" to check the straightness. He attends to what can be attended to. And then he throws what cannot rationally be thrown forty feet from a rocking boat and hits what he was aiming for.

The lamp burns without oil. The lance travels forty feet and quivers in the life spot. Neither of these things is explained. Both of them happen.

"That drove the spigot out of him!" Stubb cries, when the lance hits. "'Tis July's immortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine today!"

He's delighted. That's the other thing. He's not grim about it, not resolved, not performing courage. He's genuinely pleased that the thing worked — the way you're pleased when a long shot lands, when the impossible throw goes exactly where you aimed it.

Old Sag-Harbor's mode precludes delight. It precludes the moment of the lance quivering in the life spot. If you've already decided the whale can't swallow a man, you've also, in some important way, decided that the lance can't travel forty feet from a rocking boat. The geometry is different, but the posture is the same.

Stubb whistles. The lance returns to his hand like a greyhound. He throws again.

The lamp burns without oil. He's not looking for the oil.