381 
THE WHITE WHALE 
and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, 
driven in one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by 
nature dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, 
was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness 
peculiar to his tribe; a tribe which ever enjoy all holidays and festivi- 
ties with finer, freer relish than any other race. Por blacks, the year’s 
calendar should show naught hut three hundred and sixty-five Fourth 
of Julys and New Year’s Days. Nor smile so, while I write that this 
little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy; behold 
yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king’s cabinets. But Pip loved life, 
and all life’s peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business 
in which he had somehow unaccountably became entrapped, had most 
sadly blurred his brightness ; though, as ere long will be seen, what was 
thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly 
illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten 
times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in 
Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler’s frolic on the green ; 
and at melodious eventide, with his gay ha-ha, had turned the round 
horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air 
of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond 
drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show 
you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a 
gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some un- 
natural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences, infernally su- 
perb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest symbol of the 
crystal skies, looks like some crown- jewel stolen from the King of Hell. 
But let us to the story. 
It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Stubb’s after-oarsman 
chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed ; 
and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place. 
The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervous- 
ness ; but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale ; 
and therefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Stubb ob- 
serving him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his coura- 
geousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful. 
Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; 
and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which 
