touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants
of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland
whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the
Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of
their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they
drop them there again. How it is, there is no
telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen.
They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes
too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent
of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent
of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel,
what a set these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis
Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and
all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in
the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances before
that bar from which not very many of them ever come
back. Black Little Pip— he never
did—oh, no! he went before. Poor Alabama
boy! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle, ye
shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive
of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck
on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat
his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed
a hero there!
CHAPTER 28
Ahab
For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing
above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The
mates regularly relieved each other at the watches,
and for aught that could be seen to the contrary,
they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship;
only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders
so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was plain
they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme
lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen
by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now
sacred retreat of the cabin.
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches
below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange
face were visible; for my first vague disquietude
touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion
of the sea became almost a perturbation. This
was strangely heightened at times by the ragged Elijah’s
diabolical incoherences uninvitedly recurring to me,
with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived
of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as
in other moods I was almost ready to smile at the
solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of
the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness
or uneasiness—to call it so—
which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me
in the ship, it seemed against all warranty to cherish
such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with
the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric,
heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship
companies which my previous experiences had made me
acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and
rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness
of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation
in which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it
