THE WHITE WHALE 
135 
a peep at Flask through the cabin skylight, sitting silly and dum- 
foundered before awful Ahab. 
Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may he called the first 
table in the Pequod’s cabin. After their departure, taking place in 
inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather 
was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then 
the three harpooneers were hidden to the feast, they being its residuary 
legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants’ hall of the high 
and mighty cabin. 
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless 
invisible domineer ings of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free 
licence and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows 
the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the 
sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their 
food with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like 
lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with 
spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that 
to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale 
Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly 
quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he 
did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an 
ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, 
harpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humour, as- 
sisted Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting 
his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in 
hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He 
was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this 
bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital 
nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific 
Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages, 
Dough-Boy’s whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after 
seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he 
would escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and 
fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was 
over. 
It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against Tashtego, op- 
