Readable Classics gently edits the works of great literature, retaining their essence and spirit, and making them more enjoyable and less frustrating for modern readers.
Chapter 1Loomings

Call me Ishmael.
Some years ago, having no money in my purse and nothing to interest me on the shore, I thought I would sail around a little and see the watery part of the world.
It is my way of driving off the gloom. Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, or when I find myself following every funeral I see, and especially when I feel like stepping into the street and knocking people’s hats off--then I know it is high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
Instead of putting a pistol to my head, I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If men would only admit it, they would have nearly the same feelings toward the ocean as I.
Here is the city of Manhattan, surrounded by water. Its extreme downtown is the Battery, washed by waves and cooled by breezes. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Walk around the city on a dreamy Sunday afternoon. What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands of men fixed dreams about the ocean. They are leaning against the posts, seated on the piers, standing on the decks of ships from China, some high aloft in the rigging, as if trying to get a better seaward peep.
But these are all landsmen--weekdays pent up in plaster rooms--tied to counters, nailed to benches, fastened to desks. Why is this? Are the green fields gone? What are they doing here?
But look! Here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water. Strange! Nothing will content them but to get just as near the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--inlanders all, from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues. Here they all unite. Tell me, do the magnetic needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them there?
Say you are in the country, in a land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down to a stream. There is magic in it. Take the most absent-minded man, stand him up, set his feet going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if there is water nearby. Should you ever be thirsty in the great American desert, try meditating, for everyone knows that meditation and water are wedded forever.
Here is an artist. He desires to paint the dreamiest, most enchanting romantic landscape in all of New Hampshire. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, his meadow, his cattle, his cottage, his mountains--yet all are in vain, unless his eyes are fixed on a stream.
Go visit the Prairies in June, when for mile after mile you wade knee-deep through Tiger lilies--what is the one charm lacking? Water. There is not a drop of water there!
Were Niagara a waterfall of sand, would you travel a thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy a coat, which he sadly needed, or take a road trip to Rockaway Beach on Long Island?
Why is almost every robust healthy boy, with a robust healthy soul, crazy to go to sea? Why, upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you feel a mystical vibration when told that your ship was now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate god?
Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper is the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who saw his image in the fountain, plunged into it, and was drowned. But we see that same image in all rivers and oceans--it is the perplexing ghost of life, and this is the key to it all.
Now when I go to sea, it is never as a passenger. To go as a passenger, you need a purse, and a purse is just a rag unless you have money in it. Besides, passengers get seasick, grow quarrelsome, don’t sleep at nights or enjoy themselves much.
Nor do I go as a Commodore, a Captain, or a Cook. I give the glory of such offices to those who like them. I hate all honorable, respectable work. It is all I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of a whole ship. As for cooking, somehow I never fancied broiling fowls--though once broiled and buttered, no one will speak more respectfully of a fowl than I will.
When I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor. True, they order me about and make me jump from spar to spar like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one’s sense of honor, particularly if you come from an old established family like the Van Rensselaers or Randolphs--or Hardicanutes, an early king of England.
And most of all, if you go from being a schoolmaster where the tallest boys stand in awe of you, to putting your hand into the tar pot. The transition from schoolmaster to sailor is a drastic one, I assure you. But even this wears off in time.
What of it, if some old hunk of a sea captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? After all, who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. So, however the old captains thump and punch me, it’s all right--everybody is served one way or another in much the same way, so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulders and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they pay me for my trouble--passengers are never paid a single penny. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is the most uncomfortable burden one can bear. But being paid--what can compare with it? The act of a man receiving money is really marvelous, considering it is the root of all evil, and no way can a rich man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we deliver ourselves to hell!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor because of the wholesome exercise and pure air. The Captain at the wheel of the ship gets his atmosphere secondhand from the sailors on the fore-deck. He thinks he breathes it first, but not so. In much the same way, the common people lead their leaders.
But why did I, after many voyages as a merchant sailor, decide to go on a whaling voyage? This, the invisible hand of Fate can better answer than I. Certainly this was part of God’s grand plan. I am sure that my whaling voyage was a brief intermission between God’s more important performances--something like this:
“Grand Election for President of the United States.”
“Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael.”
“Bloody Battle in Afghanistan.”
I do not know why the stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby whaling voyage, when others were destined for magnificent roles in great events.
But now I think I can understand it, besides the delusion that it was my own free will and astute judgment--it was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself.
Such a pompous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity, along with the wild and distant seas where he rolled his bulk, and the nameless perils of the whale. Other men, perhaps, would not have been tempted. But I am tormented by an everlasting itch to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
One other thing--not knowing where we shall end up, I know it is wise to always be on friendly terms with all the inmates on the ship.
The whaling voyage, then, was welcome. The great floodgates of wonder swung open and, in my wild imaginings, the whales floated into my inmostullike a white island in the ocean.

Chapter 2The Carpet-Bag

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag--a suitcase made from an old rug--tucked it under my arm and, leaving Manhattan, I duly arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on my way to Cape Horn and the Pacific. It was a Saturday night in December. I was disappointed upon learning that the boat for Nantucket had already sailed, and no more boats would sail till Monday.
Most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling, first stop at New Bedford, then embark on their voyage. But my mind was made up to sail on none other than a Nantucket ship, because there was something fine and energetic about that famous old island which pleased me.
Besides, though New Bedford has gradually been monopolizing the business of whaling, Nantucket was the great original--the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal Indians first paddle out in canoes to chase the Leviathan? And where that first adventurous little sloop threw cobblestones at the whales, till they were near enough to risk a harpoon?
Now with the weekend in New Bedford before I could leave, I was concerned where I was to eat and sleep. It was a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place.
With anxious fingers I had found only a few pieces of silver in my pocket. So wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, be sure to inquire the price, and don’t be too particular.
I paced the streets and passed the sign of “The Crossed Harpoons” but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright windows of the “Sword-Fish Inn,” there came such glowing rays, that it seemed to have melted the ten inches of packed snow and ice in front. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I.
But go on, Ishmael. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me toward the water, for there were certainly the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.
Such dreary streets! But presently I saw a smoky light coming from a low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It was the sign of “The Trap.” Hearing a loud voice within, I opened a second, interior door. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church, and the preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out.
Moving on, I came at last to a dim light near the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking sign painted with a white whale and a jet of misty spray, and the words: “The Spouter Inn--Peter Coffin.”
Coffin? Spouter? Rather ominous connection, thought I. But Coffin is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is from there. As the light looked so dim, the place looked quiet enough, the dilapidated little wooden house looked as if it had been carted here from some burnt down ruins, and the sign had a poverty-stricken creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best coffee made from roasted green peas.
It was a queer sort of place--one side leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where the howling wind blew. What a pity they didn’t stop up the chinks and crannies to keep the wind out. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished.
But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of blubber yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of place this “Spouter” may be.

Readable Classics gently edits the works of great literature, retaining their essence and spirit, and making them more enjoyable and less frustrating for modern readers.
  Moby-Dick is Herman Melville’s 1851 masterpiece. Ishmael, a crewman aboard the whaling ship Pequod,narrates Captain Ahab’s obsessive, doomed quest to destroy the great white whale that took his leg. A tremendously ambitious novel, Moby-Dick was the first great American epic and myth, a tale of life at sea and the conflict between man and his fate. Brilliant, humorous, and bleak, Melville espouses his philosophy of life, death, religion, and moral values.
    
   The Odyssey  

   Wuthering Heights

    Great Expectations

   The Red Badge
                  of Courage

   Tale of Two Cities

   Crime
       and Punishment

   Anna Karenina