MOBY DICK
A monologue from the
novel by Herman Melville
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Moby Dick; or, the Whale. Herman Melville. New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1851. |
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STUBB: I was never served so before without giving
a hard blow for it. It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now,
I don't well know whether to go back and strike him, or--what's
that?--down here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was
the thought coming up in me; but it would be the first time I
ever DID pray. It's queer; very queer; and he's queer too; aye,
take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb
ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!--his eyes like powder-pans!
is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there
must be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed
now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and
he don't sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell
me that of a morning he always finds the old man's hammock clothes
all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and
the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of
frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot
old man! I guess he's got what some folks ashore call a conscience;
it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say--worse nor a toothache.
Well, well; I don't know what it is, but the Lord keep me from
catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into
the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects;
what's that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments
with him in the hold? Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling,
it's the old game--Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth
a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right
asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the first thing
babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all
things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my
principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep
when you can, is my twelfth--So here goes again. But how's that?
didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey,
and piled a lot of jackasses on top of THAT! He might as well
have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he DID kick me, and I
didn't observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow.
It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil's the matter
with me? I don't stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that
old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord,
I must have been dreaming, though--How? how? how?--but the only
way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and in the
morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight.
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MONOLOGUES BY HERMAN MELVILLE |
