This is my favourite chapter in Moby Dick. Tashtego falls into a whale's head, and is saved by the midwife Queequeg.
A Melville Degustation wrote:...dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. A short-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk. Several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once a queer accident happened. Tashtego, that wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to drop head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight! To the unspeakable horror of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. With a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea!
A naked figure with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue.
A sight strange to see, as an arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave. "Both! both!—it is both!"—cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk. Diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. Upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way—head foremost.
Through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing. This queer adventure will be sure to seem incredible to some landsmen, the head sank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run.
Had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing; in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the whale. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there?
