The Dark Canoe Read Online Free PDF

thy youth. When older thou may find among its dire circumambulations things to give thee pause. And if thou art deserving, knowledge of an uncommon kind. Aye, a true leviathan. Perhaps thou art right to hold it gingerly as thou do, between thumb and forefinger. Who knows? Who knows?”
    Caleb threaded his way to the table and once again began to study the chart of Magdalena. Then, of a sudden, he glanced up as if he had just remembered that I was still in the cabin.
    â€œI would not give thee the book,” he said, “unless I knew it all by heart. Aye, every word from truck to keelson, fore and aft and amidships. Now avast and leave me to muse upon the problem alone. I venture that thou shalt find Captain Ahab better company.”
    Again I tucked Moby-Dick: or, The Whale under my arm and walked through the litter of books toward the door. Caleb’s birthday present was the first gift I had ever received from him. As I reached for the door catch, the thought crossed my mind to tell him about the chest I had found. At that moment the heavy book slipped and fell with a clatter of fluttering pages.
    Caleb glanced up. “Take care,” he said in one of his softest voices. “’Tis not a ball to kick about.”
    I stiffly thanked him for his gift and went below and sat down to supper with the book propped in front of me. The crew had gone above for air, so the forecastle was quiet. I found the first pages of much interest, being in the form of short writings about whales and whaling, collected from over the world. There were writings from the time of King Alfred, even from the Bible, and such things as “The aorta of a whale is larger than the main pipe of the waterworks at London Bridge.”
    Later that night I fixed a fat candle to the bulkhead and lay in my bunk and began the story of Moby-Dick: or, The Whale . First I read the chapter names. There were one hundred and thirty-five of them, a goodly number, besides an Epilogue, which in a way is a chapter too. All of them sounded exciting, especially such names as “The Pequod Meets the Rose Bud,” “The Doubloon,” “Fast Fish and Loose Fish,” and “Ambergris.”
    There was also a chapter called “Ahab.” As I read the word I recalled that when I had taken leave of my brother he had said, “Thou shalt find Captain Ahab better company.” I therefore turned to this chapter and began to read. Not far along, I came upon a description of Ahab: “Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish.”
    These words amazed me. They could have been written, every one of them, to describe the scar that disfigured my brother’s face.
    Farther on I happened on this: “…not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale’s jaw. ‘Aye, he was dismasted off Japan,’ said the old Gay-Head Indian once; ‘but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of ’em.’”
    This also amazed me. For though my brother did not have an ivory leg, let alone a quiver of them, he did stand upon a leg that was stiff at the knee and short by a full two inches.
    I quit at this point and somewhat unsettled went to sleep pondering what I had read.

7
    Soon after dawn we went back to the place where we had searched the previous day, anchored the launches in a circle, and set up the pump. As my brother was getting ready to go down for his first dive, two trim canoes filled with Indians came from the direction of Rehusa Strait. Each canoe carried six paddles and they pulled up beside our big launch and waved a friendly