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.
When the exhausted harpooneer finally climbs aboard, dripping and trembling, the steward hands him a cup of tepid ginger water. Stubb, incredulous, demands to know what virtue ginger holds for kindling fire in a shivering cannibal. Learning that Aunt Charity imposed this temperance mandate, Stubb accuses the steward of poisoning the crew for insurance money. He countermands the captain’s implied orders, sends for real grog, and hurls Aunt Charity’s ginger-jub into the sea.
While the Pequod labors under the weight of a Sperm Whale’s head suspended from her side, the crew sights a Right Whale. Though such inferior leviathans are usually disdained, the capture is ordered to balance the ship. Stubb and Flask give chase, and after a perilous pursuit in which the whale nearly drags the boats under the keel in a maelstrom, they succeed in killing it. As the mates work to secure the carcass, sharks throng to the fresh blood, drinking thirstily at every new gash like Israelites at the smitten rock.
During the tow back, Flask shares a superstition he heard from Fedallah: a ship carrying both a Sperm Whale’s head and a Right Whale’s can never capsize. Stubb seizes the moment to expound his theory that Fedallah is the devil himself. He cites the Parsee’s serpentine tusk, his habit of sleeping coiled in rigging to hide his tail, and his impossibly ancient age. More sinister still, Stubb suspects Fedallah has struck a bargain with Ahab—to swap the captain’s soul for the White Whale. The devil means to swindle the old man in the end.
Stubb boasts that he fears no devil. Given a dark night and a clear chance, he will grab Fedallah by the neck, wrench his tail off at the capstan, and sell it for an ox whip. Flask protests that such measures would hardly dispatch an immortal, but Stubb remains cheerfully undaunted.
Back at the ship, the Right Whale is hoisted to the larboard side, counterbalancing the Sperm Whale on the starboard. The Pequod regains an even keel, though sorely strained, resembling a mule bearing overburdening panniers. The narrator reflects that minds forever trimming between opposing philosophies—Locke on one side, Kant on the other—fare no better.
Amid this toil, Fedallah is seen calmly eyeing the Right Whale’s head, glancing between its deep wrinkles and the lines in his own palm. He stands within Ahab’s shadow, their forms blending together, while the crew whispers Laplandish speculations about the strange conjunction of heads and men.
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