Ahab's fixation with Moby Dick
© Ilkhi, 2012
An excerpt from Melville's Moby Dick
Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin
"Who's there?"
hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round to it. "On
deck! Begone!"
"Captain Ahab
mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We must up
Burtons and break out."
"Up Burtons and
break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here for a week to
tinker a parcel of old hoops?"
"Either do that,
sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good in a year.
What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving, sir."
"So it is, so it
is; if we get it."
"I was speaking
of the oil in the hold, sir."
"And I was not
speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it leak! I'm all
aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks, but
those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that's a far worse plight
than the Pequod's, man. Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can
find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if
found, in this life's howling ale? Starbuck! I'll not have the
Burtons hoisted."
"What will the
owners say, sir?"
"Let the owners
stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What cares Ahab?
Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those
miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the
only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my
conscience is in this ship's keel.- On deck!"
"Captain Ahab,"
said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin, with a daring
so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost seemed not only
every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation of
itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself;
"A better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would
quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye, and in a happier,
Captain Ahab."
"Devils! Dost
thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?- On deck!"
"Nay, sir, not
yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir- to be forbearing! Shall we not
understand each other better than hitherto, Captain Ahab?"
Ahab seized a loaded
musket from the rack (forming part of most South-Sea-men's cabin
furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck, exclaimed: "There
is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord
over the Pequod.- On deck!"
For an instant in the
flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have
almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled
tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he
quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: "Thou hast
outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware
of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab;
beware of thyself, old man."
Iratxo baten ahosabaian
