144 
MOBY DICK; OR 
old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all 
over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. 
Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there 
also, you would see still stranger footprints — the footprints of his 
one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought. 
But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as 
his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his 
thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the 
mainmast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought 
turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced ; so completely 
possessing him, indeed, that it all hut seemed the inward mould of 
every outer movement. 
“D’ye mark him, Flask?” whispered Stubb; “the chick that’s in 
him pecks the shell. ’Twill soon he out.” 
The hours wore on; — Ahab now shut up within his cabin; anon, 
pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect. 
It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the 
bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with 
one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody 
aft. 
“Sir !” said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given 
on shipboard except in some extraordinary case. 
“Send everybody aft,” repeated Ahab. “Mastheads, there! come 
down !” 
When the entire ship’s company were assembled, and with curious 
and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked 
not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, 
after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes 
among the crew, started from his standpoint ; and as though not a soul 
were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent 
head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the 
wondering whispering among the men ; till Stubb cautiously whispered 
to Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose 
of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehe- 
mently pausing he cried — 
“What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?” 
