{"id":"01KJNXJQW6R3242B9Z2DTZYK4J","cid":"bafkreibviconzeyx4omd7sfrs22fu2pqwmmkkjpm4mwetsaycbmxrtks4a","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":278624,"char_start":270811,"chunk_index":38,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1954,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an\r\nindifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the\r\nchase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged\r\nfor the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his\r\nwhale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his\r\ncrew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable\r\narrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about\r\nthe snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very\r\ndeath-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and\r\noff-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his\r\nold rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated\r\nmonster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of death\r\ninto an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no\r\ntelling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question;\r\nbut, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a\r\ncomfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a\r\nsort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there,\r\nabout something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and\r\nnot sooner.\r\n\r\nWhat, perhaps, with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going,\r\nunfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a\r\nworld full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs;\r\nwhat helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that\r\nthing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black\r\nlittle pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would\r\nalmost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his\r\nnose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready\r\nloaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever\r\nhe turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from\r\nthe other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in\r\nreadiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his\r\nlegs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.\r\n\r\nI say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his\r\npeculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air,\r\nwhether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless\r\nmiseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in\r\ntime of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated\r\nhandkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal\r\ntribulations, Stubb’s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of\r\ndisinfecting agent.\r\n\r\nThe third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha’s Vineyard. A\r\nshort, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,\r\nwho somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally\r\nand hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of\r\nhonor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost\r\nwas he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic\r\nbulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of\r\nany possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion,\r\nthe wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least\r\nwater-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small\r\napplication of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This\r\nignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in\r\nthe matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a\r\nthree years’ voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted\r\nthat length of time. As a carpenter’s nails are divided into wrought\r\nnails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask\r\nwas one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They\r\ncalled him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form, he could\r\nbe well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in\r\nArctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers\r\ninserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions\r\nof those battering seas.\r\n\r\nNow these three mates—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous men.\r\nThey it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the\r\nPequod’s boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which\r\nCaptain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the\r\nwhales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being\r\narmed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio\r\nof lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins.\r\n\r\nAnd since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic\r\nKnight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,\r\nwho in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the\r\nformer 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 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