And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod
was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption;
and though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit,
instantaneous obedience; though he required no man
to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon
the quarter-deck; and though there were times when,
owing to peculiar circumstances connected with events
hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual
terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem, or
otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant
of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.
Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived,
that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he
sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use
of them for other and more private ends than they
were legitimately intended to subserve. That
certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise
in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those
forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible
dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual
superiority what it will, it can never assume the
practical, available supremacy over other men, without
the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments,
always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base.
This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes
of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and
leaves the highest honors that this air can give,
to those men who become famous more through their
infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of
the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority
over the dead level of the mass. Such large
virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political
superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances
even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency.
But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the
ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial
brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before
the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the
tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness
in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget
a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the
one now alluded to.
But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all
his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this
episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal
that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter
like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings
and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall
be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from
the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured
in the unbodied air!
CHAPTER 34
The Cabin-Table
It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting
his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle,
announces dinner to his lord and master who, sitting
in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation
of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude
on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for
that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory
leg. From his complete inattention to the tidings,
you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial.
But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds,
he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated
voice, saying, “Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,”
disappears into the cabin.
