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.
Flask saw none of this. To him the doubloon meant sixteen dollars, which meant nine hundred and sixty cigars. He climbed aloft to spot the whale that would make that gold his.
The old Manxman studied the signs and remembered a witch’s prophecy from Copenhagen. The white whale would rise when the sun entered a certain sign—the lion, the devouring beast. His ancient head shook at the thought.
Queequeg compared the coin’s markings to his own tattooed skin, puzzling over meanings he could not read, deciding the gold resembled a king’s discarded button. Fedallah simply bowed before the sun stamped at the coin’s heart—a fire worshipper’s silent prayer.
Then came Pip, the broken boy, reciting grammar’s conjugations like an incantation. I look, you look, he looks. All of them bats, and he a crow perched atop his pine tree, cawing into the void. He called the doubloon the ship’s navel, said the crew burned to unscrew it. But unscrew your navel and what remains? When something gets nailed to a mast, desperation has taken hold. His laughter rang out across the deck as he delivered his prophecy: the white whale would nail old Ahab too.
The Pequod encounters an English whaleship, the Samuel Enderby of London. From his quarter-boat, Ahab trumpets his eternal question across the water: Hast seen the White Whale? The stranger captain, a weathered man of sixty, lounges carelessly in his bow and answers by withdrawing a prosthetic arm from his jacket—white whalebone ending in a wooden mallet-head. Ahab orders his boat lowered immediately.
Boarding proves awkward. Since losing his leg, Ahab has never climbed another ship’s side; the Pequod alone has the special rigging he needs. He stares up at the rolling bulwarks, humiliated by his helplessness while officers offer useless man-ropes. The English captain sees the trouble and orders the blubber-hook swung over. Ahab hooks his thigh into the curve and is hoisted aboard like cargo, deposited on the capstan.
The two maimed captains face each other. Boomer extends his ivory arm; Ahab offers his ivory leg. They cross like dueling blades. Brothers in mutilation—arm that cannot shrink, leg that cannot run. But Ahab wants only one thing: where did you see him?
Captain Boomer tells his story. Last season on the Line, he was working a pod when a massive whale surfaced—white head, white hump, scarred with wrinkles. Harpoons jutted from his flank. Ahab recognizes his own irons. Boomer had attacked, but Moby Dick’s tail rose and smashed his boat to splinters. The second harpoon’s barb caught Boomer below the shoulder and dragged him under. Only when the iron tore free along the length of his arm did he surface, half-drowned and bleeding.
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