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CHAPTER 93 . The Castaway . It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman , that a most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew ; an event most lamentable ; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own . Now , in the whale ship , it is not every one that goes in the boats . Some few hands are reserved called ship - keepers , whose province it is to work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale . As a general thing , these ship - keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats ’ crews . But if there happen to be an unduly slender , clumsy , or timorous wight in the ship , that wight is certain to be made a ship - keeper . It was so in the Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nick - name , Pip by abbreviation . Poor Pip ! ye have heard of him before ; ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight , so gloomy - jolly . In outer aspect , Pip and Dough - Boy made a match , like a black pony and a white one , of equal developments , though of dissimilar colour , driven in one eccentric span . But while hapless Dough - Boy was by nature dull and torpid in his intellects , Pip , though over tender - hearted , was at bottom very bright , with that pleasant , genial , jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe ; a tribe , which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer , freer relish than any other race . For blacks , the year’s calendar should show naught but three hundred and sixty - five Fourth of Julys and New Year’s Days . Nor smile so , while I write that this little black was brilliant , for even blackness has its brilliancy ; behold yon lustrous ebony , panelled in king’s cabinets . But Pip loved life , and all life’s peaceable securities ; so that the panic - striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped , had most sadly blurred his brightness ; though , as ere long will be seen , what was thus temporarily subdued in him , in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires , that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut , he had once enlivened many a fiddler’s frolic on the green ; and at melodious even - tide , with his gay ha - ha ! had turned the round horizon into one star - belled tambourine . So , though in the clear air of day , suspended against a blue - veined neck , the pure - watered diamond drop will healthful glow ; yet , when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre , he lays it against a gloomy ground , and then lights it up , not by the sun , but by some unnatural gases . Then come out those fiery effulgences , infernally superb ; then the evil - blazing diamond , once the divinest symbol of the crystal skies , looks like some crown - jewel stolen from the King of Hell . But let us to the story . It came to pass , that in the ambergris affair Stubb’s after - oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand , as for a time to become quite maimed ; and , temporarily , Pip was put into his place . The first time Stubb lowered with him , Pip evinced much nervousness ; but happily , for that time , escaped close contact with the whale ; and therefore came off not altogether discreditably ; though Stubb observing him , took care , afterwards , to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost , for he might often find it needful .
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