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.
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.
Ishmael walks away from the Pequod with his thoughts churning. The fragments he has heard of Ahab fill him with a vague, wild sense of trouble. He feels sympathy for the man, though he cannot say why, perhaps for the cruel amputation, perhaps for something deeper. And he feels something else, a sensation that is not quite awe but close to it, an attraction mixed with impatience at the mystery. For now, though, other concerns press upon him, and the dark figure of the captain recedes from his mind as he turns toward the next day’s work.
Respecting Queequeg’s religious obligations, Ishmael decides to leave his friend in peace to complete his Ramadan, reflecting that all mortals are somewhat cracked in the head regarding their faith. However, when Ishmael returns in the evening, he finds the door locked and Queequeg unresponsive to his calls. Peering through the keyhole, he sees the harpoon leaning against the wall but no sign of the man. Panic sets in as Ishmael fears Queequeg has suffered an apoplectic fit or committed suicide, recalling the landlady’s story of a previous boarder’s demise.
He rushes to fetch Mrs. Hussey, who is more concerned about her property than the passenger. She attempts to intervene with a spare key, but it fails to turn the lock. Ignoring her protests about damaging the door, Ishmael gathers his momentum and bursts it open with a sudden bodily rush. The door flies off its hinges, revealing Queequeg squatting in the center of the room, rigid and statue-like, with Yojo balanced on his head. He is in a trance-like state, utterly unresponsive to Ishmael’s entreaties or the landlady’s astonishment.
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