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.
Yet as the morning watch wore on, and the dreamy sentiment of the mast-head gave way to the practical necessities of the ship, the ordinary business of the voyage resumed its hold upon the crew. The men who had kept their vigil above now descended to take their breakfast, and for a time the Pequod moved forward under the quiet discipline of her mates, as she had done in the days before. But even as Ishmael’s meditations on the dangers of unguarded contemplation faded into the routine of the morning, there stirred below deck a purpose far more deliberate and lethal than any poetic fancy—a design that would seize upon every soul aboard and bind them to a hunt more desperate than any ordinary whaling. For in his cabin, unseen and waiting, the captain who had kept himself apart from the crew was about to emerge, and the words he would speak from the quarter-deck would transform the peaceful mission of the ship into something else entirely.
Ahab emerges from his cabin after breakfast, pacing the quarter-deck with his steady ivory stride. The planks bear the dented record of his ceaseless rounds, and his brow shows stranger footprints still—the tracks of one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought. The crew senses something gathering. Stubb whispers to Flask that the chick inside Ahab pecks the shell; it will soon be out. As evening approaches, Ahab halts by the bulwarks, inserts his bone leg into the auger-hole, and orders Starbuck to send everybody aft. The mate stares at this extraordinary command, but Ahab insists: mast-heads and all.
When the full company assembles, Ahab paces before them like a storm walking, then suddenly demands to know what they do when they sight a whale. The crew shouts back the old answers: sing out, lower away, pull to a dead whale or a stove boat. Their excitement mounts at these purposeless questions until Ahab, grasping a shroud, holds up a bright Spanish gold ounce. He calls for a hammer and nails the coin to the main-mast, promising it to whoever raises a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and crooked jaw. Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg start with recognition. It is Moby Dick.
Ahab confesses what the crew only suspected: the White Whale took his leg. He rages with a terrific, animal sob, vowing to chase Moby Dick round Good Hope, round the Horn, round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before giving up. He demands their hands on it. The harpooneers and seamen roar approval. But Starbuck stands apart. He protests that vengeance on a dumb brute is madness and blasphemy. He came to hunt whales, not his commander’s private war. How many barrels will that vengeance yield in Nantucket market?
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