{"id":"01KJNXJQV7VQWGS6RS3CV3CWD1","cid":"bafkreic6s24gqptj5vcijcb2vbxzcyxj4k2msm62f7jmhsexthqgg7jcva","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":179140,"char_start":171179,"chunk_index":24,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1991,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"confidence in the excellence of Yojo’s judgment and surprising forecast\r\nof things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather\r\ngood sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in\r\nall cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.\r\n\r\nNow, this plan of Queequeg’s, or rather Yojo’s, touching the selection\r\nof our craft; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little\r\nrelied upon Queequeg’s sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to\r\ncarry us and our fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances\r\nproduced no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and\r\naccordingly prepared to set about this business with a determined\r\nrushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle that\r\ntrifling little affair. Next morning early, leaving Queequeg shut up\r\nwith Yojo in our little bedroom—for it seemed that it was some sort of\r\nLent or Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with\r\nQueequeg and Yojo that day; _how_ it was I never could find out, for,\r\nthough I applied myself to it several times, I never could master his\r\nliturgies and XXXIX Articles—leaving Queequeg, then, fasting on his\r\ntomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at his sacrificial fire of\r\nshavings, I sallied out among the shipping. After much prolonged\r\nsauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that there were three\r\nships up for three-years’ voyages—The Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and the\r\nPequod. _Devil-Dam_, I do not know the origin of; _Tit-bit_ is obvious;\r\n_Pequod_, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated\r\ntribe of Massachusetts Indians; now extinct as the ancient Medes. I\r\npeered and pryed about the Devil-dam; from her, hopped over to the\r\nTit-bit; and finally, going on board the Pequod, looked around her for\r\na moment, and then decided that this was the very ship for us.\r\n\r\nYou may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I\r\nknow;—square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-box\r\ngalliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a\r\nrare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old\r\nschool, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed\r\nlook about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and\r\ncalms of all four oceans, her old hull’s complexion was darkened like a\r\nFrench grenadier’s, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her\r\nvenerable bows looked bearded. Her masts—cut somewhere on the coast of\r\nJapan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale—her masts\r\nstood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her\r\nancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped\r\nflag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these\r\nher old antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining\r\nto the wild business that for more than half a century she had\r\nfollowed. Old Captain Peleg, many years her chief-mate, before he\r\ncommanded another vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one\r\nof the principal owners of the Pequod,—this old Peleg, during the term\r\nof his chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and\r\ninlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and device,\r\nunmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake’s carved buckler or\r\nbedstead. She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his\r\nneck heavy with pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of\r\ntrophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased\r\nbones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were\r\ngarnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the\r\nsperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews\r\nand tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood,\r\nbut deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile\r\nwheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller\r\nwas in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her\r\nhereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest,\r\nfelt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching\r\nits jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things\r\nare touched with that.\r\n\r\nNow when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having\r\nauthority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at\r\nfirst I saw nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of\r\ntent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. It\r\nseemed only a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical\r\nshape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber\r\nblack bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the\r\nright-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of\r\nthese slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at\r\nthe apex united in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved\r\nto and fro like the top-knot on some old Pottowottamie Sachem’s head. A\r\ntriangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship, so that the\r\ninsider commanded a complete view forward.\r\n\r\nAnd half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by\r\nhis aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the\r\nship’s work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of\r\ncommand. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all\r\nover with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a\r\nstout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was\r\nconstructed.\r\n\r\nThere was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of\r\nthe elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen,\r\nand heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style;\r\nonly there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest\r\nwrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his\r\ncontinual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to\r\nwindward;—for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed\r\ntogether. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.\r\n\r\n“Is this the Captain of the Pequod?” said I, advancing to the door of\r\nthe tent.\r\n\r\n“Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of\r\nhim?” he demanded.\r\n\r\n“I was thinking of shipping.”\r\n\r\n“Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer—ever been in a\r\nstove boat?”\r\n\r\n“No, Sir, I never have.”\r\n\r\n“Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say—eh?\r\n\r\n“Nothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I’ve been\r\nseveral voyages in the merchant service, and I think that—”\r\n\r\n“Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that\r\nleg?—I’ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of\r\nthe marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose\r\nnow ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant\r\nships. But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?—it\r\nlooks a little suspicious, don’t it, eh?—Hast not been a pirate, hast\r\nthou?—Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?—Dost not think of\r\nmurdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?”\r\n\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."},"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":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM53NKWEJ4GR0WPQG0VAH","peer_label":"yojo","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"deity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXNA6Q7NV244AJQKVXKZ","peer_label":"queequeg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKSZYY4PZZGTPZ89W34AF","peer_label":"narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCV8J37JHVK8J8PY15EG","peer_label":"captain peleg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKZBGV5QSFPD19S2BQF68","peer_label":"captain ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMT0E1D02ASBR71T70CV6","peer_label":"merchant service","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"industry","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN7RVAGYZ1XV5Q9SC6QFB","peer_label":"thorkill-hake","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN8KKQQKVSNFR5Q0Z6CFX","peer_label":"becket","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN9X0HTG8TX1ZT7428BJC","peer_label":"right-whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"marine_animal","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNDQHJ62CH6J6N82FRY39","peer_label":"cape cod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographical_location","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFA5R772Q6NCF2QTRJP9","peer_label":"the vineyard","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographical_location","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFFZ2KTTW071P608RTR4","peer_label":"nantucketer","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"social_group","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFE80MCVMS0XDP3V6K3D","peer_label":"wigwam on pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"temporary_structure","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN92DPRH9S5KNHA8AV72W","peer_label":"sperm whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"marine_animal","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN8PMGYAY0SDV4DSA04TR","peer_label":"massachusetts indians","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"native_american_tribe","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN8PKSEH74KTWF6GWXQFN","peer_label":"the tit-bit","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMYNWPMMJ2T8F8N29MSYN","peer_label":"the devil-dam","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNHFYTVCQ5D3VFB9C0X5H","peer_label":"xxxix articles","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNHFQ61NZ2QQNYB7471FA","peer_label":"canterbury cathedral","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"religious_site","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.148Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.623Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:14.241Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}