{"id":"01KJNXJQV7Q8YN1KDH2CY2PNNM","cid":"bafkreif6trley4rdyml4j6gejj7ajcsnhjoptjryvp32vcpfldknr6h2li","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":186167,"char_start":178359,"chunk_index":25,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1952,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"\r\nI protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask of\r\nthese half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated\r\nQuakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather\r\ndistrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the\r\nVineyard.\r\n\r\n“But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of\r\nshipping ye.”\r\n\r\n“Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.”\r\n\r\n“Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?”\r\n\r\n“Who is Captain Ahab, sir?”\r\n\r\n“Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship.”\r\n\r\n“I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself.”\r\n\r\n“Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg—that’s who ye are speaking to,\r\nyoung man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted\r\nout for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We\r\nare part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest\r\nto know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way\r\nof finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap\r\neye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one\r\nleg.”\r\n\r\n“What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?”\r\n\r\n“Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed\r\nup, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a\r\nboat!—ah, ah!”\r\n\r\nI was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at\r\nthe hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I\r\ncould, “What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know\r\nthere was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed\r\nI might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident.”\r\n\r\n“Look ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d’ye see; thou\r\ndost not talk shark a bit. _Sure_, ye’ve been to sea before now; sure\r\nof that?”\r\n\r\n“Sir,” said I, “I thought I told you that I had been four voyages in\r\nthe merchant—”\r\n\r\n“Hard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant\r\nservice—don’t aggravate me—I won’t have it. But let us understand each\r\nother. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel\r\ninclined for it?”\r\n\r\n“I do, sir.”\r\n\r\n“Very good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live\r\nwhale’s throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick!”\r\n\r\n“I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to\r\nbe got rid of, that is; which I don’t take to be the fact.”\r\n\r\n“Good again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find\r\nout by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in order to\r\nsee the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just\r\nstep forward there, and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back\r\nto me and tell me what ye see there.”\r\n\r\nFor a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not\r\nknowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But\r\nconcentrating all his crow’s feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started\r\nme on the errand.\r\n\r\nGoing forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that the\r\nship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely\r\npointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but\r\nexceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I\r\ncould see.\r\n\r\n“Well, what’s the report?” said Peleg when I came back; “what did ye\r\nsee?”\r\n\r\n“Not much,” I replied—“nothing but water; considerable horizon though,\r\nand there’s a squall coming up, I think.”\r\n\r\n“Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go\r\nround Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can’t ye see the world where\r\nyou stand?”\r\n\r\nI was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and the\r\nPequod was as good a ship as any—I thought the best—and all this I now\r\nrepeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed his\r\nwillingness to ship me.\r\n\r\n“And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,” he added—“come\r\nalong with ye.” And so saying, he led the way below deck into the\r\ncabin.\r\n\r\nSeated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and\r\nsurprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along with\r\nCaptain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other\r\nshares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd\r\nof old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards;\r\neach owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a\r\nnail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in\r\nwhaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state\r\nstocks bringing in good interest.\r\n\r\nNow, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a\r\nQuaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to\r\nthis day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the\r\npeculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by\r\nthings altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same\r\nQuakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They\r\nare fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.\r\n\r\nSo that there are instances among them of men, who, named with\r\nScripture names—a singularly common fashion on the island—and in\r\nchildhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the\r\nQuaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless\r\nadventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these\r\nunoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not\r\nunworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when\r\nthese things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a\r\nglobular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and\r\nseclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and\r\nbeneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think\r\nuntraditionally and independently; receiving all nature’s sweet or\r\nsavage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding\r\nbreast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental\r\nadvantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language—that man makes\r\none in a whole nation’s census—a mighty pageant creature, formed for\r\nnoble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically\r\nregarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems\r\na half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For\r\nall men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be\r\nsure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.\r\nBut, as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite another;\r\nand still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from\r\nanother phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.\r\n\r\nLike Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman.\r\nBut unlike Captain Peleg—who cared not a rush for what are called\r\nserious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the\r\nveriest of all trifles—Captain Bildad had not only been originally\r\neducated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but\r\nall his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely\r\nisland creatures, round the Horn—all that had not moved this native\r\nborn Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his\r\nvest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common\r\nconsistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from\r\nconscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself\r\nhad illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn\r\nfoe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled\r\ntuns upon tuns of leviathan gore."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKZBGV5QSFPD19S2BQF68","peer_label":"captain ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM423TTC0Y0A1Y0X78QFB","peer_label":"nantucket","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"place","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKSZYY4PZZGTPZ89W34AF","peer_label":"narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKYQT8NKB1JV9WAZTZ7F3","peer_label":"cape horn","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographical_feature","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM4ABQHDNRR9K67QJS45J","peer_label":"atlantic ocean","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ocean","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKZTEDRAVQY55ZXTCS226","peer_label":"pacific ocean","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ocean","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCXQ411WT9ZVVDED6483","peer_label":"captain bildad","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMD0R73X3P7505P98Z2M4","peer_label":"cape cod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"place","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCV8J37JHVK8J8PY15EG","peer_label":"captain peleg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMD0E2BN0HHNPA2WNZBPF","peer_label":"whaling","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"activity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMT0DTM4GWVMW3WNB76Q3","peer_label":"quaker","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"religious_sect","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMT0E1D02ASBR71T70CV6","peer_label":"merchant service","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"industry","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCYS3Q46VX9QJEKCHWVY","peer_label":"monstrous parmacetty","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMD0WAHBX440ZSHY78PHZ","peer_label":"the vineyard","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"place","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMT9XXC1F6V39JKFM21JS","peer_label":"pequod minor shareholders","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"group_of_people","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:38.406Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.623Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:03:49.576Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}