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Table of Contents
Chapter 30
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. ..
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