THE WHITE WHALE 105 
whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had 
personally and hereditarily affronted him ; and, therefore, it was a sort 
of point of honour with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. 
So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of 
their majestic hulk and mystic ways ; and so dead to anything like an 
apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them, that in 
his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was hut a species of magnified 
mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and 
some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. 
This ignorant unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish 
in the matter of whales ; he followed these fish for the fun of it ; and a 
three years’ voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted 
that length of time. As a carpenter’s nails are divided into wrought 
nails and cut nails ; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask 
was one of the wrought ones ; made to clinch tight and last long. They 
called him King-Post on board of the Pequod ; because in form he could 
be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in Arctic 
whalers ; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers in- 
serted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions of 
those battering seas. 
How these three mates — Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momen- 
tous men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three 
of the Pequod’ s boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in 
which Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on 
the whales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, 
being armed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked 
trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. 
And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a 
Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or har- 
pooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, 
when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault ; 
and moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close 
intimacy and friendliness ; it is therefore but meet, that in this place 
we set down who the Pequod’ s harpooneers were, and to what headsman 
each of them belonged. 
First of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had 
selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known. 
