XCVII
The Lamp
Had you descended from the Pequod’s try-works to the Pequod’s , where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some of kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.
In merchantmen, oil for the is more than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his , this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his an Aladdin’s lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship’s black hull still houses an .
See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his of lamps—often but old bottles and , though—to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.