Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
Queequeg delivers strange news as they lie in bed planning the next day’s work. His small black deity, Yojo, has been consulting with him through dreams and signs, and the god’s command is clear: Ishmael must choose their vessel alone, without Queequeg’s counsel. The harpooneer will remain behind to observe a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. Ishmael protests this arrangement. He had counted on his friend’s seafaring wisdom to identify the soundest whaler in the fleet. But Queequeg defers to Yojo’s judgment with such calm certainty that Ishmael surrenders. At dawn, leaving his companion seated cross-legged with his tomahawk pipe, fasting before his sacrificial fire of shavings, Ishmael sets out among the anchored ships.
Three vessels prepare for three-year voyages: the Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod. Ishmael examines the first two without conviction. Then he steps aboard the Pequod and knows at once that his search has ended. She is an old-fashioned craft, small and weathered, her hull darkened by typhoons and calms across four oceans. Her masts stand rigid as ancient kings, her decks worn smooth by decades of boots and rope. But what arrests him is her barbaric grandeur. The vessel displays her conquests openly: whale teeth line her bulwarks as pins for her rigging, her blocks are carved from sea ivory, and her tiller is hewn from the jaw of her enemy. She resembles a savage emperor draped in the spoils of war. A noble ship, yet touched with melancholy, as all noble things seem to be.
On deck, Ishmael finds a curious structure of right-whale jawbones lashed together into a tent. Inside sits a brown, brawny man wrapped in blue pilot-cloth, his face creased with wrinkles earned from squinting into headwinds. This is Captain Peleg, one of the vessel’s principal owners. His interrogation begins at once. He mocks Ishmael’s merchant service experience, demands to know whether he has ever been in a stove boat, and half-jokingly accuses him of planning mutiny. Ishmael answers with patience, explaining that he wishes to see the world and learn the whaling trade.
Peleg’s manner softens slightly, but he presses harder. He reveals that the Pequod’s true commander is Captain Ahab, a man who lost his leg to a sperm whale that crushed and devoured it. The old seaman’s voice rises with feeling as he describes the monstrous creature. Ishmael absorbs this information without flinching. Peleg tests him further, asking whether he has the stomach to drive a harpoon into a living whale. Then he sends him to the weather bow to contemplate the horizon. Ishmael sees nothing but gray water and a distant squall, but he returns undeterred. Peleg grunts his approval and leads him below.
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