CHAPTER 29

  Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb

  Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now

went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which at sea, almost

perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the

Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing,

redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up-

flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed

haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride,

the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!

For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and

such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning

weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward

world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still

mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear

ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle

agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture.

  Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the

less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among

sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to

visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of

late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly

speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to

the planks. "It feels like going down into one's tomb,"- he would

mutter to himself- "for an old captain like me to be descending this

narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth."

  So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night

were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band

below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the

sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some

cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their

slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to

prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the

cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at

the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering touch of

humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained

from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates,

seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have

been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their

dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the

mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy,

lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to

mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a

certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain

Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but

there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something

indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the

insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know

Ahab then.

  "Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me

that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly

grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the

filling one at last.- Down, dog, and kennel!"

  Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so

suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said

excitedly, "I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less

than half like it, sir."

  "Avast! gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving

away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.

  "No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will not tamely be

called a dog, sir."

  "Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and

begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!"

  As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing

terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.

  "I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,"

muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle.

"It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know whether

to go back and strike him, or- what's that?- down here on my knees and

pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it

would be the first time I ever did pray. It's queer; very queer; and

he's queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest

old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!- his eyes like

powder-pans! is he mad! Anyway there's something's on his mind, as

sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in

his bed now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and

he don't sleep then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me

that of a morning he always finds the old man's hammock clothes all

rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid

almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as

though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess he's got

what some folks ashore call a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row

they say- worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it

is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles; I

wonder what he goes into the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy

tells me he suspects; what's that for, I should like to know? Who's

made appointments with him in the hold? Ain't that queer, now? But

there's no telling, it's the old game- Here goes for a snooze. Damn

me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only

to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the

first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but

all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my

principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when

you can, is my twelfth- So here goes again. But how's that? didn't

he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a

lot of jackasses on top of that! He might as well have kicked me,

and done with me. Maybe he did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was

so taken aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached

bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right on my

legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong

side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though- How? how?

how?- but the only way's to stash it; so here goes to hammock again;

and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over

by daylight."