GR 'Streets'

[s~Z]

Chapter VII - THE CHAPEL

In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are the
moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to
make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this
special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet
and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin,
I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small
scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled
silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each
silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each
silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet
arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly
eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on
either side the pulpit.

[...]

Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among
flowers can say - here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation
that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered
marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions!
What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw
upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly
perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of
Elephanta as here.

In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included; why it
is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, though
containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is that to his name
who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix so significant and
infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but embarks for the
remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance Companies pay
death- forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring paralysis,
and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round
centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who
we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the
living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking
in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their
meanings.

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead
doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket
voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that
darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me,
Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again.
Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems - aye,
a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this
business of whaling - a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into
Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of
Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my
true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too
much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that
thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my
better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove
body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.