108 
MOBY DICK; OR 
Every time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I in- 
stantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible ; for my first 
vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion 
of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely height- 
ened at times by the ragged Elijah’s diabolical incoherences unin- 
vitedly recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before 
conceived of. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other 
moods I was almost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that 
outlandish prophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of appre- 
hensiveness or uneasiness — to call it so — which I felt, yet whenever I 
came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to 
cherish such emotions. Eor though the harpooneers, with the great 
body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set 
than any of the tame merchant ship companies which my previous 
experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this — and 
rightly ascribed it— to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that 
wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so ahandonedly embarked. 
But it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers of the ship, 
the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay these colourless 
misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment 
of the voyage. Three better, more like sea-officers and men, each in 
his own different way, could not readily he found, and they were every 
one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. 
Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbour, for 
a space we had biting polar weather, though all the time running away 
from it to the southward ; and by every degree and minute of latitude 
which we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its 
intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but 
still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with 
a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive 
sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the 
deck at the call of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance 
towards the taffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Eeality outran 
apprehensions ; Captain Ahab stood upon his quarter-deck. 
There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the 
recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, 
when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming 
