66 
MOBY DICK; OR 
Going forward and glancing over the weather-how, I perceived that 
the ship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely 
pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, hut 
exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that 
I could see. 
“Well, what’s the report?” said Peleg when I came back; “what did 
ye see?” 
“Not much,” I replied — “nothing hut water; considerable horizon 
though, and there’s a squall coming up, I think.” 
“Well, what dost thou think then of seeing the world ? Dio ye wish 
to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can’t ye see the 
world where you stand?” 
I was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would ; and 
the Pequod was as good a ship as any — I thought the best — and all 
this I now repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed 
his willingness to ship me. 
“And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,” he added — 
“come along with ye.” And so saying, he led the way below deck into 
the cabin. 
Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon 
and surprising figure. It turned out to he Captain Bildad, who along 
with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the 
other shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a 
crowd of old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery 
wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of 
plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their 
money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved 
state stocks bringing in good interest. 
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was 
a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and 
to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure 
the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modi- 
fied by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these 
same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale- 
hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a ven- 
geance. 
So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with 
