Dusk. First night watch. Midnight, Forecastle. Moby Dick. The whiteness of the whale. Hark! The chart.
My soul is more than matched; she’s overmanned; and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field!
Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I've been thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence. Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.
“HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”
Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table.
