136 
MOBY DICK; OR 
posing his filed teeth to the Indian’s : crosswise to them, Daggoo seated 
on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head 
to the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the 
low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes 
passenger in a ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonder- 
fully abstemious, not to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that 
by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality 
diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubt- 
less, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding 
element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sub- 
lime life of the worlds. Hot by beef or by bread, are giants made or 
nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of the lip 
in eating — an ugly sound enough — so much so, that the trembling 
Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked 
in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing 
out for him to produce himself, that his hones might be picked, the 
simple-witted steward all hut shattered the crockery hanging around 
him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Hor did the 
whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for their 
lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner, they 
would ostentatiously sharpen their knives ; that grating sound did not at 
all tend to tranquillise poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that 
in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty 
of some murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas ! Dough-Boy ! hard 
fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Hot a napkin 
should he carry on his arm, hut a buckler. In good time, though, to 
his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; 
to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling 
in them at every step, like Moorish scimitars in scabbards. 
But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally 
lived there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they 
were scarcely ever in it except at meal-times, and just before 
sleeping-time, when they passed through it to their own peculiar 
quarters. 
In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American 
whale captains, who ? as a set, rather incline tp the opinion that by 
