第三十三章 脂切长
关于捕鲸船上的船员编制，此处恰可顺带记述船上一种特有的内部情形，其根源在于设有鱼叉手这一军官阶层——当然，除了捕鲸船队，任何别的船队都没有这一阶层。
鱼叉手一职备受重视，旧时荷兰捕鲸业中便可窥见，那是两百多年前的事了，当时鲸船的指挥权并非完全掌握在如今所谓船长一人手中，而是由他与一位称作“Specksnyder”的军官分担。此词直译为“切脂人”；然久而久之，其意等同于“首席鱼叉手”。彼时，船长之权仅限于航行与船舶的一般管理；而鲸猎部门及其一切事务，则归Specksnyder即首席鱼叉手全权辖制。在不列颠的格陵兰捕鲸业中，这一古老的荷兰官职以讹传讹称作Specksioneer，沿用至今，然其旧日尊严已大损。如今他不过位列资深鱼叉手；以此身份，仅是船长手下较低级的属官之一。尽管如此，由于捕鲸航程之成败大半系于鱼叉手之行止，且在美国捕鲸业中，他不仅是小艇上的要员，遇某些情形（如捕鲸场的夜间值班）更执掌甲板指挥之权；故而海上至高的政治准则要求，他在名义上须与艏楼水手隔开居住，并以某种方式显出其职业上的优越；虽则水手们始终视其为社会地位平等之辈，相处亲如手足。
海上军官与水手之根本区别就在于——前者居船尾，后者处船头。因此，捕鲸船与商船无异，大副二副与船长同舱；美国多数捕鲸船上，鱼叉手亦宿于船之后部。也就是说，他们在船长舱内用膳，寝于与之间接相通之处。
虽说南方捕鲸航程漫长（远迈古今人类一切航程），险情殊异，且同船之人，无论尊卑，其利不靠固定薪俸，而赖同心之运道，并同心之警醒、无畏与苦工；虽说此等情形于某些案例中确令纪律较一般商船为宽；然不论此等捕鲸者于某些古朴实例中如何如古美索不达米亚家族般同居，至少后甲板之繁文缛节鲜有实质松弛，更无一例废弛。实则，南塔基特诸船中，多见船长昂然踱于后甲板，其矜骄之态不输任何海军；甚而挟近乎帝王之尊，虽身著最敝之领航布衣，犹索得如许外恭。
裴廓德号那忧郁船长，于此类浅薄虚饰最不屑为；其所求唯有无条件、即刻之服从；不令任何人登后甲板前脱履；且因后文将述之特殊情由，偶有以异乎寻常之辞——或俯就，或威吓，或别的——谕其属下；然即便埃哈伯船长，亦绝非不守海上至要之仪轨成法。
或许终将为人觉察，彼于这些仪轨成法之后，时而掩藏自身；借之以为他项目的与私图，逾其本旨。其脑中某种苏丹式专断，本可久匿不显；借此诸法，竟化为不可抗拒之独裁。盖一人智识虽优，若无某种外在权术与凭依——其物本身恒不免鄙陋卑下——终不能擅实际可用之霸权于人上。正因如此，上帝真命帝国之王子辈，永隔于世之讲坛；而此尘世至高之荣，乃归彼辈：其得名非由优于庸众之确然卓绝，而由远逊于冥冥中神选隐者之无穷下劣。此等细事，一经极端政治迷信所附，便藏巨德； royal之例，乃至痴愚亦藉获威权。然若如沙皇尼古拉，地理帝国之环冠加于帝王之脑，则庶民伏匍于可怖之集权下。悲剧作者欲写凡人不可御之刚毅，尽展其势，亦断不忘此艺中偶涉之要谛，即今所言之事。
然埃哈伯，吾之船长，仍以前现于我：南塔基特之冷峻，须发之蓬乱。此节涉帝王君王，吾不敢隐：吾所写不过如彼之老捕鲸者；故一切外显之威仪排场，皆非吾所能有。哦，埃哈伯！汝之崇伟，必自苍穹摘取，自深渊捞获，于无形之空中塑其形！
Concerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place
as any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising
from the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown
of course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.
The large importance attached to the harpooneer’s vocation is evinced
by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries
and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the
person now called the captain, but was divided between him and an
officer called the Specksnyder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter;
usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In
those days, the captain’s authority was restricted to the navigation
and general management of the vessel; while over the whale-hunting
department and all its concerns, the Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneer
reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted
title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but
his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as
senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain’s more
inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the
harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since
in the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the
boat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling
ground) the command of the ship’s deck is also his; therefore the grand
political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart
from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their
professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as
their social equal.
Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is
this—the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and
merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and
so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in
the after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in
the captain’s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with
it.
Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest
of all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and
the community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high
or low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their
common luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and
hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a
less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind
how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some
primitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious
externals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed,
and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in
which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated
grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as
much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the
shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the least
given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage
he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he
required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the
quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar
circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he
addressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or _in
terrorem_, or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means
unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind
those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself;
incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than
they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of
his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested;
through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an
irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what
it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over
other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and
entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base.
This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from
the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can
give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite
inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than
through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass.
Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political
superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot
imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of
Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an
imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the
tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would
depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing,
ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one
now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket
grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and
Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old
whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings
and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it
must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and
featured in the unbodied air!
