THE WHITE WHALE 133 
officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly 
enough towards their commander ; yet, ten to one, let those very officers 
the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same com- 
mander’s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory 
and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table ; this is 
marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A 
problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; 
and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein 
certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he 
who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own 
private dinner-table of invited guests-, that man’s unchallenged power 
and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man’s royalty 
of state transcends Belshazzar’s, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. 
Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Ciesar. 
It is* a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, 
if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship- 
master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity 
of sea-life just mentioned. 
Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea- 
lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still 
deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be 
served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, 
in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With 
one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s knife, as he 
carved the chief dish before him, I do not suppose that for the world 
they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, 
even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No ! And when reaching 
out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Ahab 
thereby motioned Starbuck’s plate towards him, the mate received his 
meat as though receiving alms ; and cut it tenderly ; and a little startled 
if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed it noise- 
lessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the 
Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor pro- 
foundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals 
were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence ; and yet at table 
old Ahab forbade pot conversation ; only he himself was dumb. t Whgt 
