“Look here, friend,” said I, “if you have anything important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are mistaken in your game; that’s all I have to say.”

“And it’s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are just the man for him—­the likes of ye.  Morning to ye, shipmates, morning!  Oh! when ye get there, tell ’em I’ve concluded not to make one of ’em.”

“Ah, my dear fellow, you can’t fool us that way—­you can’t fool us.  It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.”

“Morning to ye, shipmates, morning.”

“Morning it is,” said I.  “Come along, Queequeg, let’s leave this crazy man.  But stop, tell me your name, will you?”

“Elijah.”

Elijah! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear.  But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance.  Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did.  He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine.  This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.

I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of it retraced our steps.  But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us.  This relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.

CHAPTER 20

All Astir

A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Pequod.  Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened that the ship’s preparations were hurrying to a close.  Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the hands:  Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall.