Moby Dick

"Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg--that's who ye are speaking to,
young man.  It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted
out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew.
We are part owners and agents.  But as I was going to say, if thou wantest
to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way
of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out.
Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has
only one leg."

"What do you mean, sir?  Was the other one lost by a whale?"

"Lost by a whale!  Young man, come nearer to me:  it was devoured,
chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped
a boat!--ah, ah!"

I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched
at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly
as I could, "What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could
I know there was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale,
though indeed I might have inferred as much from the simple fact
of the accident."

"Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see;
thou dost not talk shark a bit.  Sure, ye've been to sea before now;
sure of that?"

"Sir," said I, "I thought I told you that I had been four voyages
in the merchant-"

"Hard down out of that!  Mind what I said about the marchant service--
don't aggravate me--I won't have it.  But let us understand each other.
I have given thee a hint about what whaling is! do ye yet feel
inclined for it?"

"I do, sir."

"Very good.  Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live
whale's throat, and then jump after it?  Answer, quick!"

"I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so;
not to be got rid of, that is; which I don't take to be the fact."

"Good again.  Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling,
to find out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want
to go in order to see the world?  Was not that what ye said?
I thought so.  Well then, just step forward there, and take
a peep over the weather bow, and then back to me and tell me
what ye see there."

For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request,
not knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest.
But concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg
started me on the errand.

Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived
that the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was
now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean.  The prospect
was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding;
not the slightest variety that I could see.

"Well, what's the report?" said Peleg when I came back;
"what did ye see?"

"Not much," I replied--"nothing but water; considerable horizon though,
and there's a squall coming up, I think."

"Well, what dost thou think then of seeing the world?
Do ye wish to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh?
Can't ye see the world where you stand?"

I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would;
and the Pequod was as good a ship as any--I thought the best--
and all this I now repeated to Peleg.  Seeing me so determined,
he expressed his willingness to ship me.

"And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,"
he added--"come along with ye."  And so saying, he led the way
below deck into the cabin.

Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and
surprising figure.  It turned out to be Captain Bildad who along
with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel;
the other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports,
being held by a crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children,
and chancery wards; each owning about the value of a timber head,
or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship.
People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels,
the same way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing
in good interest.

Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers,
was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect;
and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon
measure the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and
anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous.
For some of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary
of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers;
they are Quakers with a vengeance.

So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with