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Table of Contents
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 warrantry to ..
2 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 was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the
ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colorless
misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the
voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own
different way, could not readily be found, and they were every one of them
Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas
when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar
weather, though all the time running away from it to the southward; and by
every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that
merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of
those less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the
transition, when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with
a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the
deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance
towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran
apprehension; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck. There seemed no sign
of common bodily illness about him, nor of the recovery from any. He looked
like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all
the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their
compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid
bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus.
Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one
side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing,
you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that
perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great
tree, when the upper lightning ..
3 tearingly darts down
it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from
top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly
alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the
scar left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit
consent, throughout the voyage little or no allusion was made to it,
especially by the mates. But once Tashtego's senior, an old Gay-Head Indian
among the crew, superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years
old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the
fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild
hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old
sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out of Nantucket, had never
ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the
immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with preternatural
powers of discernment. So that no white sailor seriously contradicted him when
he said that if ever Captain Ahab should be tranquilly laid out --which might
hardly come to pass, so he muttered --then, whoever should do that last office
for the dead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole. So powerfully
did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which
streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little
of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he
partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been
fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw. Aye, he was
dismasted off Japan, said the old Gay-Head Indian once; but like his dismasted
craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. he has a quiver of
'em. I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of
the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there was an
auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg
steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab
stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There
was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable ..
4 wilfulness, in the
fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke;
nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures
and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness
of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken
Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless
regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit
in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every
day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an
ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy;
indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a
recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead
wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it
came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet, for all
that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he seemed as
unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only making a passage
now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives needing
supervision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little or
nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away,
for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his
brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant,
holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For,
as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the
wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven
old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such
glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the
playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the
faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out
in a smile. ..
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