THE WHITE WHALE 107 
it is the same with the American whale-fishery as with the American 
army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces 
employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads— 
the same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally 
provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the 
muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the 
Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch 
to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. 
In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, 
put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their 
crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again. 
How it is, there is no telling, hut Islanders seem to make the best 
whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Peqaod Isolatos too, 
I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each 
Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated 
along one keel, what a set these Isolatos were ! An Anacharsis Clootz 
deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, 
accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances 
before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back. 
Black Little Pip — he never did! Poor Alabama boy! On the grim 
Pequod’ s forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine ; 
prelusive of the eternal time, when, sent for to the great quarter-deck 
on high, he was hid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine 
in glory ; called a coward here, hailed a hero there ! 
CHAPTER, XXVII 
ahab 
For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was 
seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved each other at 
the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they 
seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes 
issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after 
all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme 
lord and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not 
permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin. 
