Short Fiction, Herman Melville [read out loud books TXT] 📗

Of course the ’Gee has his private nature as well as his public coat. To know ’Gees⁠—to be a sound judge of ’Gees⁠—one must study them, just as to know and be a judge of horses one must study horses. Simple as for the most part are both horse and ’Gee, in neither case can knowledge of the creature come by intuition. How unwise, then, in those ignorant young captains who, on their first voyage, will go and ship their ’Gees at Fogo without any preparatory information, or even so much as taking convenient advice from a ’Gee jockey. By a ’Gee jockey is meant a man well versed in ’Gees. Many a young captain has been thrown and badly hurt by a ’Gee of his own choosing. For notwithstanding the general docility of the ’Gee when green, it may be otherwise with him when ripe. Discreet captains won’t have such a ’Gee. “Away with that ripe ’Gee!” they cry; “that smart ’Gee; that knowing ’Gee! Green ’Gees for me!”

For the benefit of inexperienced captains about to visit Fogo, the following may be given as the best way to test a ’Gee: Get square before him, at, say three paces, so that the eye, like a shot, may rake the ’Gee fore and aft, at one glance taking in his whole make and build⁠—how he looks about the head, whether he carry it well; his ears, are they over-lengthy? How fares it in the withers? His legs, does the ’Gee stand strongly on them? His knees, any Belshazzar symptoms there? How stands it in the regions of the brisket, etc., etc.

Thus far bone and bottom. For the rest, draw close to, and put the centre of the pupil of your eye⁠—put it, as it were, right into the ’Gee’s eye⁠—even as an eye-stone, gently, but firmly slip it in there, and then note what speck or beam of viciousness, if any, will be floated out.

All this and more must be done; and yet after all, the best judge may be deceived. But on no account should the shipper negotiate for his ’Gee with any middleman, himself a ’Gee. Because such an one must be a knowing ’Gee, who will be sure to advise the green ’Gee what things to hide and what to display, to hit the skipper’s fancy; which, of course, the knowing ’Gee supposes to lean toward as much physical and moral excellence as possible. The rashness of trusting to one of these middlemen was forcibly shown in the case of the ’Gee who by his countrymen was recommended to a New Bedford captain as one of the most agile ’Gees in Fogo. There he stood straight and stout, in a flowing pair of man-of-war’s-man trousers, uncommonly well fitted out. True, he did not step around much at the time. But that was diffidence. Good. They shipped him. But at the first taking in of sail the ’Gee hung fire. Come to look, both trousers-legs were full of elephantiasis. It was a long sperm-whaling voyage. Useless as so much lumber, at every port prohibited from being dumped ashore, that elephantine ’Gee, ever crunching biscuit, for three weary years was trundled round the globe.

Grown wise by several similar experiences, old Captain Hosea Kean, of Nantucket, in shipping a ’Gee, at present manages matters thus: He lands at Fogo in the night; by secret means gains information where the likeliest ’Gee wanting to ship lodges; whereupon with a strong party he surprises all the friends and acquaintances of that ’Gee; putting them under guard with pistols at their heads; then creeps cautiously toward the ’Gee, now lying wholly unawares in his hut, quite relaxed from all possibility of displaying aught deceptive in his appearance. Thus silently, thus suddenly, thus unannounced, Captain Kean bursts upon his ’Gee, so to speak, in the very bosom of his family. By this means, more than once, unexpected revelations have been made. A ’Gee, noised abroad for a Hercules in strength and an Apollo Belvidere for beauty, of a sudden is discovered all in a wretched heap; forlornly adroop as upon crutches, his legs looking as if broken at the cartwheel. Solitude is the house of candor, according to Captain Kean. In the stall, not the street, he says, resides the real nag.

The innate disdain of regularly bred seamen toward ’Gees receives an added edge from this. The ’Gees undersell them working for biscuit where the sailors demand dollars. Hence anything said by sailors to the prejudice of ’Gees should be received with caution. Especially that jeer of theirs, that monkey-jacket was originally so called from the circumstance that that rude sort of shaggy garment was first known in Fogo. They often call a monkey-jacket a ’Gee-jacket. However this may be, there is no call to which the ’Gee will with more alacrity respond than the word “Man!”

Is there any hard work to be done, and the ’Gees stand round in sulks? “Here, my men!” cries the mate. How they jump. But ten to one when the work is done, it is plain ’Gee again. “Here, ’Gee you ’Ge-e-e-e!” In fact, it is not unsurmised, that only when extraordinary stimulus is needed, only when an extra strain is to be got out of them, are these hapless ’Gees ennobled with the human name.

As yet, the intellect of the ’Gee has been little cultivated. No well-attested educational experiment has been tried upon him. It is said, however, that in the last century a young ’Gee was by a visionary Portuguese naval officer sent to Salamanca University. Also, among the Quakers of Nantucket, there has been talk of sending five comely ’Gees, aged sixteen, to Dartmouth College; that venerable institution, as is well known, having been originally founded partly with the object of finishing off wild Indians in the classics and higher mathematics. Two qualities of the ’Gee which, with his docility, may be justly regarded as