62 
MOBY DICK; OR 
sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among the shipping. After 
much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that 
there were three ships up for three-years’ voyages — the Devil-dam , the 
Tit-bit , and the Pequod. Devil-dam , I do not know the origin of; Tit- 
bit is obvious; Pequod , you will no doubt remember, was the name of 
a celebrated tribe of Massachusetts Indians, now extinct as the ancient 
Medes. I peered and pryed about the Devil-dam: from her, hopped 
over to the Tit-bit; and, finally, going on hoard the Pequod , looked 
around her for a moment, and then decided that this was the very ship 
for us. 
You may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I 
know; — square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-hox 
galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such 
a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod . She was a ship of the 
old school, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed 
look about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons 
and calms of all four oceans, her old hull’s complexion was darkened 
like a French grenadier’s, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. 
Her venerable hows looked bearded. Her masts — cut somewhere bn 
the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a 
gale — her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings 
of Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the 
pilgrim-worshipped flagstone in Canterbury Cathedral where Becket 
bled. But to all these her old antiquities, were added new and mar- 
vellous features, pertaining to the wild business that for more than 
half a century she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, many years her 
chief mate, before he commanded another vessel of his own, and now 
a retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of the Pequod , — 
this old Peleg, during the term of his chiefmateship, had built upon 
her original grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness 
both of material and device, unmatched by anything except it be 
Thorkhill-Hake’s carved buckler or bedstead. She was apparelled like 
any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants of 
polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies — a cannibal of a craft, 
tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round, 
her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous 
jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for 
