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.
In the cramped cabin, they find Captain Bildad, the vessel’s other principal owner. A retired whaleman of sixty, Bildad sits bolt-upright on the transom, his drab coat buttoned to his chin, spectacles perched on his nose as he reads from a ponderous Bible. He is a Quaker of the strictest sect, a man whose pious exterior conceals a reputation for driving crews to exhaustion. Where Peleg blusters, Bildad calculates. The two partners could not be more different.
The negotiation turns to Ishmael’s lay, his share of the voyage’s profits. He knows that green hands receive meager portions, but he hopes his general seafaring experience will earn him the 275th lay. Bildad has other ideas. Without looking up from his book, he quotes scripture and proposes the 777th lay, a fraction so small it would barely cover the cost of Ishmael’s clothing and board. He invokes the widows and orphans who hold minor shares in the vessel, arguing that generosity to a stranger would rob the deserving poor.
Peleg erupts. He thunders that Bildad’s conscience is a leaky vessel that will sink him to perdition. The two Quakers trade theological insults, their voices rising until Peleg lunges at his partner. Bildad evades him with practiced ease. Then, as quickly as it began, the storm passes. Both men settle back into their seats. Peleg declares that Ishmael shall have the 300th lay, and Bildad returns to his reading without further protest. Ishmael signs the articles, secures permission to bring Queequeg for inspection the following day, and leaves the cabin satisfied.
But as he walks away from the ship, a thought strikes him. He has committed himself to a three-year voyage under a captain he has never seen. He returns to ask Peleg where he might find Ahab.
The old man’s expression shifts. Ahab keeps to his cabin, he explains, nursing an ailment that is neither quite sickness nor health. He is a strange man, Peleg admits, but a good one. He speaks in grand, sweeping terms of Ahab’s education, his travels among cannibals, his battles with foes stranger than whales. When Ishmael mentions the biblical king Ahab, who died a wicked death, Peleg cuts him off sharply. The name was his mother’s foolish fancy, nothing more. Old prophecies about its significance are lies. Ahab has been moody since losing his leg, desperate and savage at times, but that will pass. A moody good captain is better than a laughing bad one. And Ahab has a young wife, a sweet girl, and a child. A man with such ties cannot be wholly lost.
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