{"id":"01KFNR871N2G849BQA1G57N1Q3","cid":"bafkreif4opepbktu3txiul3ivv73yyru6ovckxoiahb22ivjtpwrtlt2em","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5217,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.924Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":5157,"text":"former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and\r\nmoreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy\r\nand friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set\r\ndown who the Pequod’s harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of\r\nthem belonged.\r\n\r\nFirst of all was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected\r\nfor his squire. But Queequeg is already known.\r\n\r\nNext was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly\r\npromontory of Martha’s Vineyard, where there still exists the last\r\nremnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the\r\nneighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring\r\nharpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of\r\nGay-Headers. Tashtego’s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones,\r\nand black rounding eyes—for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but\r\nAntarctic in their glittering expression—all this sufficiently\r\nproclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud\r\nwarrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had\r\nscoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer\r\nsnuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now\r\nhunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon\r\nof the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look\r\nat the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have\r\ncredited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and\r\nhalf-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers\r\nof the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate’s squire.\r\n\r\nThird among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black\r\nnegro-savage, with a lion-like tread—an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended\r\nfrom his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called\r\nthem ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to\r\nthem. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler,\r\nlying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been\r\nanywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors\r\nmost frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold\r\nlife of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what\r\nmanner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues,\r\nand erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six\r\nfeet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at\r\nhim; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to\r\nbeg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro,\r\nAhasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a\r\nchess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod’s company, be it\r\nsaid, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men\r\nbefore the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans\r\nborn, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same\r\nwith the American whale fishery as with the American army and military\r\nand merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the\r\nconstruction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say,\r\nbecause in all these cases the native American liberally provides the\r\nbrains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No\r\nsmall number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the\r\noutward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews\r\nfrom the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the\r\nGreenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland\r\nIslands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage\r\nhomewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling,\r\nbut Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all\r\nIslanders in the Pequod, _Isolatoes_ too, I call such, not\r\nacknowledging the common continent of men, but each _Isolato_ living on\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84EE27YW9F1QQPJ9QYYX","peer_label":"27","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84EE27YW9F1QQPJ9QYYX","peer_label":"27","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR86ZJ0GD1GNK19EATPX3B","peer_label":"Chunk 3","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KFNR86W78FS47QFQNTA1KCRH","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.590Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:14.980Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}