Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Narrator’s Unease Mitigated by Competent Ship’s Officers

The narrator experiences a vague disquietude regarding the unknown captain, which becomes intensified by the recurring memory of Elijah’s diabolical incoherences. Despite these apprehensions, he finds reassurance in the aspect of the three chief officers—the mates—who are calculated to allay his misgivings and induce confidence. These three Americans—a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, and a Cape man—represent the best possible sea-officers in their different ways. The narrator acknowledges that it would be against all warrantry to cherish emotions of anxiety, given the competent leadership visible in the mates’ conduct and the nature of the whaling profession itself.

First Sighting of Captain Ahab on the Quarterdeck

On a grey, transition morning with a fair wind, as the Pequod rushes through the water with vindictive rapidity, the narrator ascends to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch. As he levels his glance toward the taffrail, foreboding shivers run over him. Reality outruns apprehension: Captain Ahab stands upon his quarter-deck. There appeared to be no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of recovery from any—he seems a man cut away from the stake, where fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them. His whole high, broad form seems made of solid bronze, shaped in an unalterable mould like Cellini’s cast Perseus.

Ahab’s Physical Description: Livid Scar and Ivory Prosthetic Leg

Threading its way from among his grey hairs and continuing down one side of his tawny, scorched face and neck, a slender rod-like mark stretches in a lividly whitish line. This mark resembles the perpendicular seam made in a great tree when lightning tears down it, peeling and grooving out the bark from top to bottom while leaving the tree still greenly alive but branded. The origin of this mark—whether born with him or the scar of a desperate wound—remains uncertain. Superstitious crew members offer conflicting accounts: an old Gay-Head Indian claims Ahab was branded at forty in an elemental strife at sea, while a grey Manxman suggests a birth-mark covers him from crown to sole. The narrator also notes the barbaric white leg upon which Ahab partly stands—an ivory prosthetic fashioned from the polished bone of a sperm whale’s jaw. As one crew member observed: “He was dismasted off Japan… but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of ’em.”