a lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as
well have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe
he did kick me, and I didn’t observe it, I was
so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It
flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil’s
the matter with me? I don’t stand right
on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has
a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord,
I must have been dreaming, though—How? how?
how?— but the only way’s to stash
it; so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning,
I’ll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over
by daylight.”
The Pipe
When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning
over the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with
him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent
him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe.
Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting
the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat
and smoked.
In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving
Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of
the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look
at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without
bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized?
For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea and
a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor
came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which
blew back again into his face. “How now,”
he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, “this
smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard
must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here
have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring—
aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while;
to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if,
like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest
and fullest of trouble. What business have I
with this pipe? This thing that is meant for
sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild
white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine.
I’ll smoke no more-”
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea.
The fire hissed in the waves; the same instant the
ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made.
With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.
Queen Mab
Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had.
You know the old man’s ivory leg, well I dreamed
he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back,
upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right
off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid,
and I like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it.
But what was still more curious, Flask—you
know how curious all dreams are—through
all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be
thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much
of an insult, that kick from Ahab. ‘Why,’
thinks I, ‘what’s the row? It’s
