34 
MOBY DICK; OR 
admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, 
sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it 
was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen among whom 
he was a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer 
in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the minis- 
try. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy 
winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging 
into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, 
there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom — the 
spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February’s snow. N o one 
having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold 
Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain 
engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventur- 
ous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that he 
carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for his 
tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth 
jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the 
water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one 
by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner: 
when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit. 
Like most old-fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a 
regular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, 
seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it 
seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the 
pulpit without stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like 
those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whal- 
ing captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red wor- 
sted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and 
stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering 
what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halt- 
ing for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasp- 
ing the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look 
upwards, and then with a truly sailorlike but still reverential dexterity, 
hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the maintop of his 
vessel. 
The perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case 
with swinging ones, were of cloth covered rope, only the rounds were 
