492 
MOBY DICK; OR 
dren-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen ; the monomaniac 
old man seemed distrustful of his crew’s fidelity ; at least, of nearly all 
except the pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether 
Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But 
if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from 
verbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint 
them. 
“I will have the first sight of the whale myself,” — he said. “Aye! 
Ahab must have the doubloon!” and with his own hands he rigged a 
nest of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single 
sheaved block, to secure to the mainmast head, he received the two 
ends of the downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket, 
prepared a pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This 
done, with that end yet in his hand, and standing beside the pin, he 
looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing 
his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning 
Fedallah ; and then settling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate, 
said — “Take the rope, sir — I give it into thy hands, Starbuck.” 
Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word for them to 
hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope 
at last ; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one hand cling- 
ing round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles 
and miles, — ahead, astern, this side, and that, — within the wide ex- 
panded circle commanded at so great a height. 
When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place 
in the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea 
is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope ; under these 
circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict 
charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in 
such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations 
aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them a 
the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few 
minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatal- 
ity, if unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should 
by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to 
the sea. So Ahab’s proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the 
only strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the 
