Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad’s language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
‘Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,’ cried Peleg. ‘Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers—it takes the shark out of ’em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who ain’t pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of after claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones.’
‘Peleg! Peleg!’ said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, ‘thou thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death; how, then, can’st thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did’st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?’
‘Hear him, hear him now,’ cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,—‘hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands—how to rig jury-masts—how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of.’
Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some sail-makers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of the tarred twine, which otherwise might have been wasted.
Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?’
Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trousers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.
‘Have ye shipped in her?’ he repeated.
‘You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose,’ said I, trying to gain a little more time for an uninterrupted look at him.
‘Aye, the Pequod—that ship there,’ he said, drawing back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘we have just signed the articles.’
‘Anything down there about your souls?’
‘About what’
‘Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any,’ he said quickly. ‘No matter though, I know many chaps that hav’n’t got any—good luck to ’em; and they are all the better off for it. A soul’s a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon.’
‘What are you jabbering about, shipmate?’ said I.
‘He’s got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other chaps,’ abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word he.
‘Queequeg,’ said I, ‘let’s go; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere; he’s talking about something and somebody we don’t know.’
‘Stop!’ cried the stranger. ‘Ye said true—ye hav’n’t seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?’
‘Who’s Old Thunder?’ said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner.
‘Captain Ahab.’
‘What! the captain of our ship, the Pequod?’
‘Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye hav’n’t seen him yet, have ye?’
‘No, we hav’n’t. He’s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long.’
‘All right again before long!’ laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. ‘Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be all right; not before.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘What did they tell you about him? Say that!’
‘They didn’t tell much of anything about him; only I’ve heard that he’s a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.’
‘That’s true, that’s true—yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go—that’s the word with Captain Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly scrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?—heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn’t ye hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don’t think ye did; how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows’ever, mayhap, ye’ve heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that every one knows a’most—I mean they know he’s only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off.’
‘My friend,’ said I, ‘what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don’t know, and I don’t much care; for it seems to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of his leg.’
‘All about it, eh—sure you do?—all?
‘Pretty sure.’
With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar like stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little, turned and said, ‘Ye’ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all. Anyhow, it’s all fixed and arranged a’ready; and some sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity ’em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I stopped ye.’
‘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