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MOBY DICK; OR 
eer,” cried Peleg. “Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers — it 
takes the shark out of ’em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who ain’t 
pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest 
boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the 
meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened about his 
plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear 
of afterclaps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones.” 
“Peleg! Peleg!” said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, “thou 
thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, 
Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death ; how, then, canst thou prate 
in this ungodly guise? Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell 
me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in that 
typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Cap- 
tain Ahab, didst thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?” 
“Hear him, hear him now,” cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, 
and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets, — “hear him, all of 
ye. Think of that ! When every moment we thought the ship would 
sink ! Death and the Judgment then ? What ? With all three masts 
making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea 
breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment 
then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Cap- 
tain Ahab and I was thinking of ; and how to save all hands — how to 
rig jury-masts — how to get into the nearest port ; that was what I was 
thinking of.” 
Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, 
where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking 
some sail-makers who were mending a topsail in the waist. Now and 
then he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of the tarred twine, 
which otherwise might have been wasted. 
CHAPTER XIX 
THE PEOPHET 
“Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship ?” 
Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod , and were sauntering away 
from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts ; 
