110 
MOBY DICK; OR 
side of the Pequoct’s quarter-deck, and pretty close to the mizzen 
shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into 
the plank. His hone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and 
holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out. 
beyond the ship’s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest 
fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and 
fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke ; nor 
did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest ges- 
tures and expressions-, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, 
consciousness of being under . a troubled master-eye. And not only 
that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with an apparently 
eternal anguish in his face ; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity 
of some mighty woe. 
Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. 
But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either 
standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or 
heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy ; indeed, began 
to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, 
when the ship had sailed from home, nothing hut the dead wintry 
bleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, 
it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the air ; but, as yet, 
for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he 
seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was 
only making a passage now ; not regularly cruising ; nearly all whaling 
preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, 
so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite 
Ahab, now ; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that 
layer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose 
the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon. 
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the 
present, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him 
from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April 
and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods ; even the barest, 
ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some 
few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants ; so Ahab did, 
in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish 
