THE WHITE WHALE n* 
it would be the first time I ever did pray. It’s queer ; very queer ; and 
lie’s queer too; ay, take him fore and aft, he’s about the queerest old 
man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me! — his eyes like 
powder-pans ! is he mad ? Anyway there’s something on his mind, as 
sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He ain’t in 
his bed now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; 
and he don’t sleep then. Didn’t that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell 
me that of a morning he always finds the old man’s hammock clothes 
all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the 
coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, 
as though a baked brick had been on it ? A hot old man ! I guess he’s 
got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it’s a kind of Tic-dolly- 
row they say — worse nor a toothache. Well, well ; I don’t know what it 
is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He’s full of riddles; I 
wonder what he goes into the after-hold for, every night, as Dough- 
Boy tells me he suspects; what’s that for, I should like to know? 
Who’s made appointments with him in the hold? Ain’t that queer, 
now? But there’s no telling, it’s the old game — Here goes for a 
snooze. Damn me, it’s worth a fellow’s while to be born into the 
world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that’s 
about the first thing babies do, and that’s a sort of queer, too. Damn 
me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em. But that’s against 
my principles. Think not is my eleventh commandment; and sleep 
when you can, is my twelfth — So here goes again. But how’s that? 
didn’t he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, 
and piled a lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as well have 
kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn’t 
observe it, I was so taken aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed 
like a bleached bone. What the devil’s the matter with me ? I don’t 
stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of 
turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dream- 
ing, though — How? how? how? — but the only way’s to stash it; so 
here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I’ll see how this 
•plaguy juggling thinks over by daylight.” 
