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.
The Rachel bore down on the Pequod, her spars thickly clustered with men. As the broad-winged stranger shot nigh, the Pequod’s sails fell together like burst bladders. “Bad news; she brings bad news,” muttered the old Manxman. Before her commander could hail, Ahab’s voice rang out: “Hast seen the White Whale?”
“Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?”
Ahab throttled his joy. The stranger captain sprang to the Pequod’s deck—a Nantucketer Ahab knew. No formal salutation. “Where was he?—not killed!”
The story emerged: three boats engaged with whales miles from the ship when Moby Dick loomed to leeward. A fourth boat—the swiftest keeled—gave chase. The mast-head watcher saw the diminished boat, a swift gleam of bubbling white water, then nothing. The Rachel searched all night, crowding stunsail on stunsail, kindling fires in her try-pots for a beacon, but found no trace.
The stranger begged Ahab to join the search, sailing parallel lines. Stubb whispered to Flask about a stolen coat—until the captain cried out: “My boy, my own boy is among them!” Stubb’s cynicism collapsed. “His son! We must save that boy.” The fuller story: two sons had been separated in the chase; one saved, one still missing—a lad of twelve.
The stranger beseeched Ahab. “For you too have a boy, Captain Ahab—a child of your old age. Yes, yes, you relent—”
“Avast. Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go.”
Ahab descended to his cabin. The two ships diverged. Long as the Rachel was in view, she yawed hither and thither at every dark spot on the sea, her yards swinging round, tacking starboard and larboard, her masts thick with men like cherry trees when boys cluster the boughs. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.
Ahab moved to go on deck; Pip caught his hand. “Thou must not follow Ahab now. There is that in thee too curing to my malady. For this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.”
Pip clung: “Use poor me for your one lost leg; so I remain a part of ye.”
Ahab was moved. Pip promised never to desert him as Stubb had. Ahab’s purpose wavered, then hardened. He threatened, then blessed: “God for ever save thee, let what will befall.”
Ahab went. Pip stood alone, speaking of himself in third person. He sat in Ahab’s chair, imagining admirals with gold lace, toasting shame upon cowards. Above, he heard the ivory foot. “Master, I am down-hearted when you walk over me. But here I’ll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and oysters come to join me.”
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