Brian G. Spare / PhD Hunt For Moby Dick (Translated)

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62309-893-3
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 412 Seiten

The Hunt For Moby Dick It's the most readable Moby-Dick! A story of yesterday rewritten for today's reader. Brian G. Spare, PhD has abridged and updated mainly the narrative of Herman Melville's literary fiction classic Moby-Dick to bring to light the 'romance of adventure' novel Melville first intended. From Nantucket round the Tip of Africa to the Sea of Japan, Captain Ahab stalks his foe in a mad quest for vengeance on the White Whale for maiming him. '... To the last I grapple with thee ... thou damned whale ...' Join in the excitement of this timeless epic. Become enthralled in this 'romance of adventure'. Board the Pequod as we set sail in The Hunt For Moby Dick. What makes this book unique? • The text is updated/modernized while maintaining a sense of the era in which the story took place • Strictly educational material is removed to streamline the novel leaving just the story • A glossary of terms and phrases assists you • Ship diagrams guide you through the Pequod as you read • I feel this book, The Hunt For Moby Dick, is close to the 'romance of adventure' novel Melville first intended to write.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brian G. Spare, PhD

PhD,

Leseproben

Chapter 2
The Spouter Inn
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet bag, tucked it under my arm and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhattan, I duly arrived in New Bedford on a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and no way of getting there till Monday. Most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at New Bedford to embark on their voyage, but I had no intention of doing so. My mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft. There was a fine boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island which pleased me. Though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, Nantucket was her great original, the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Now having a night, a day, and still another night before me in New Bedford ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concern as to where I would eat and sleep. It was a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious fingers I searched my pocket and only brought up a few pieces of silver. “So, wherever you go Ishmael,” said I to myself as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my bag and comparing the gloom toward the north with and the darkness toward the south, “wherever in your wisdom you decide to sleep for the night, be sure to inquire the price and don’t be too particular.” With halting steps I paced the streets and passed the sign of ‘The Crossed Harpoons’ but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the ‘Swordfish Inn’, there came such fervent rays that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere the congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard pavement. Rather weary for me when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from hard remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a miserable plight. Too expensive and jolly again thought I pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. “But go on Ishmael,” said I at last; “don’t go here. Get away from before the door your patched boots are stopping the way.” So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward for there doubtless were the cheapest if not the cheeriest inns. Such dreary streets! Blocks of blackness, not from houses, stood on either side and here and there a candle would shine like a candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. Moving on I at last came to a dim light not far from the docks. Hearing a forlorn creaking in the air I looked up to see a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it with a faded picture of a tall straight jet of misty spray and these words underneath – ‘The Spouter Inn: Peter Coffin.’ Coffin? – Spouter? –Rather ominous in that particular connection thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket they say, and I suppose this Peter is an emigrant from there. The light looked so dim, and for the time the place seemed quiet enough. The dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and the swinging sign had a poverty stricken sort of creak. It was a queer sort of gable-ended old house with one side leaning over sadly as it stood on a sharp bleak corner where a tempestuous wind kept up a worse howling than ever. ”Here’s the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea-coffee,” thought I. Entering the Spouter Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, cramped entryway with old fashioned wainscots reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked and in every way defaced, that from the unequal cross lights by which you viewed it, you could never arrive at an understanding of its purpose. But what most puzzled you was a long, portentous black mass hovering in the centre with three blue dim perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. This dirty scratched picture was truly enough to drive a nervous man to distraction. Yet there was a sort of indefinite, half-attained oath you’d make with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale, a blasted heath, the unnatural combat of the four primal elements or the breaking up of the ice bound stream of Time. But at last, all of these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst which, once found out, was a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish. Maybe even the great leviathan itself. In fact, partly based on the opinions of many aged sailors with whom I conversed with on the subject, the artist’s design to me seemed this. The picture represents a Cape-Horner ship in a great hurricane. The half-foundered ship was weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible, and an exasperated whale purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling itself upon the three mastheads. The opposite wall of this entryway was hung all over with an array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws, others tufted with knots of human hair, and one was sickle-shaped with a vast handle sweeping round like the segment made in the new mown grass by a long armed scythe. You shuddered as you gazed and wondered what monstrous savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking horrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons, and among them was a once long lance, now warped, fifty years ago Nathan Swain killed fifteen whales between sunrise and sunset. And that harpoon, so twisted now, was flung in Javan seas and run away with by a whale years afterward slain off the Cape of Bianco. The original iron entered near the tail and like a restless needle travelled a full forty feet and at last was found imbedded in the hump. Crossing this dusky entry and on through the low-arched way cut through old wrinkled planks, you’d almost fancy you trod in some old craft’s cockpit, especially on such a howling night when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long low shelflike table covered with cracked glass cases filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world’s remotest nooks. Projecting from the far angle of the room stood a darkened den, the bar, which was a rude attempt at a right whale’s head. Be that as it may, there stood the vast arched bone of the whale’s jaw so wide a stagecoach could drive beneath it. And in those jaws of swift destruction bustled a little withered old man, Jonah they called him, who for their money dearly sold the sailors deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true cylinders outside, the inside of these villainous green goggling glasses was deceitfully tapered downward to a cheating bottom. Parallel lines were rudely etched into the glasses. Fill to this mark, and your charge is a penny, then to this mark, a penny more, and so on to full glass, the Cape Horn measure, which you can gulp down for a shilling. Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table examining by a dim light diverse specimens of scrimshander. I sought the landlord and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room was told that his house was full. “But avast,” he added, “ye hain’t no objections to sharin’ a harpooner’s blanket, have ye?” I s’pose ye’re goin’ awhalin’, so ye’d better get used to that sort of thing.” I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed. And if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooner might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the harpooner did not object, rather than wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with half of any decent man’s blanket. “I thought so. All right then, take a seat. Supper? You want supper? It’ll be ready soon.” I sat down on an old wooden bench carved all over. At one end an old sailor was further adorning it with his jackknife stooping over and diligently working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at carving a ship under full sail, but he wasn’t making much headway thought I. At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as ice. No fire at all. The landlord said he couldn’t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles each in a winding sheet. We had to button up our monkey jackets and hold our lips to cups of scalding tea with our half–frozen fingers. But the food was of the most substantial kind, meat and potatoes and dumplings too. Good heavens! Dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green boxcoat addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner. “My boy,” said the landlord, “ye’ll have a nightmare for sure.” “Landlord,” I whispered, “that’s not the harpooner is it?” “Oh no,” said he looking a sort of diabolically funny, “the harpooner’s a dark-complexioned chap, he never eats dumplings, he don’t. He eats nothing but steaks, and likes ‘em...