![]() ![]() “Good!” cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them. “Sing out for him!” was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices. “What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?” With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew, started from his standpoint and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. “Sir!” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on ship-board except in some extraordinary case. Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft. The hours wore on - Ahab now shut up within his cabin anon, pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect. “D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb “the chick that’s in him pecks the shell. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced so completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints- the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.īut on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden. It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. You should visit Browse Happy and update your internet browser today! The embedded audio player requires a modern internet browser. ![]()
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