Moby Dick Page #5

And others is bound for France

Heave away, my Johnny

Heave away

And some that's bound for the Bengal Bay

To teach them whales to dance

And away, my Johnny boy

We're all bound to go

Come all you hard-weathered sailors

Who round the Cape of Storms

Heave away, my Johnny

Heave away

Be sure your boots and oilskins on

Or you'll wish you'd never been born

And away, my Johnny boy

We 're all bound to go

Set the topsails!

Up helm.

And around the world!

The Pequod beat an easterly course

toward the whaling grounds off the Azores.

The crew came from all the isles of the sea,

all the ends of the earth:

from Greenland to Mombasa...

from Clyde to Kokovoko.

Flask, the third mate,

bullied everybody bigger than himself...

particularly whales,

with whom he carried on a one-sided feud...

as though the great leviathans

had mortally insulted him and his forebears.

And there was Pip, black little Pip,

the cabin boy from Alabama.

Second in command was Starbuck...

whose Quaker stock had furnished

many a whaleboat with its champion.

No crusader after perils...

his courage was one of the great staples

of the ship, like beef or flour:

there when required,

and not to be foolishly wasted.

Ship 's carpenter:

he fixed everything

from stove boats to broken arms and legs.

Perth, the blacksmith, lived amidst

thick, hovering flights of sparks.

He breathed them in and out.

They nested in his ears.

But Perth cared not because, as he said...

he was scorched all over,

and you cannot scorch a scar.

Queequeg was our first harpooneer.

Next was Tashtego, the Indian

from a great warrior race of red men...

come to hunt whale instead of buffalo.

Then Daggoo, who got his boldness

and majesty and grace...

from having killed a lion single-handed

and partaken of its flesh.

Stubb, the second mate.

Stubb, who 'd have tied a bowline

in the devil's tail for a joke.

Carefree, foolish, laughing, wise Stubb.

Of our supreme lord and dictator,

there was no sign.

Ahab stayed silent

behind his locked door...

all the daylight hours.

It's him again. It's Ahab.

Ahab come out in moonlight.

Strange.

Only at night.

Every night, all alone, walking the deck.

"Sand it, holystone it," they say.

And when you're done, what happens?

"Start over again," they say.

"Clean it up, sand it down, buff it off."

Keeps you busy, lad. No time for mischief.

Here we go.

Looming straight up and over us...

Like a solid iron figurehead

suddenly thrust into our vision...

stood Captain Ahab.

His whole, high, broad form...

weighed down upon a barbaric white leg

carved from the jawbone of a whale.

He did not feel the wind

or smell the salt air.

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