The Figure of Gabriel
A man rowing in the Jeroboam’s boat has a striking, unusual appearance even for the rough, diverse whaling life: he is short, youngish, covered in freckles, with thick, abundant yellow hair, wearing a long, faded walnut-colored coat with overlapping sleeves rolled up to his wrists, and his eyes hold a deep, settled, fanatic delirium. Stubb immediately recognizes him as the strange “scaramouch” the crew of the Town-Ho had previously told the Pequod about, a man rumored to wield unusual power over the Jeroboam’s crew.
Gabriel’s History
Gabriel was originally raised among the fanatic Neskyeuna Shakers, where he worked as a self-proclaimed prophet, claiming to have descended from heaven via a trapdoor bearing the seventh vial of the apocalypse (supposedly filled with laudanum, not gunpowder) to announce the end of the world. He left the Shakers for Nantucket, hiding his insanity to pass as a steady, common-sense green hand hired for the Jeroboam’s voyage. Once the ship was out of sight of land, his madness broke out fully: he declared himself the archangel Gabriel, ordered the captain to jump overboard, and proclaimed himself the deliverer of the sea isles and vicar-general of all Oceanica. His unflinching, fervent declarations and the preternatural terror of his delirium convinced the ignorant, superstitious crew to worship him as a sacred figure, and they forced the captain to keep him on board with complete freedom and no work requirements. Since the epidemic broke out on the Jeroboam, Gabriel has only grown more powerful, claiming the plague is under his sole command, and the crew cringes and pays him personal homage as if to a god.
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