.. < chapter xxx 4  THE PIPE >


     When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a

while leaning over the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of

late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool,

and also his pipe.  lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the

stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.  In old Norse times,

the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition,

of the tusks of the narwhale.  How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that

tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized?  For a

Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was

Ahab.  Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth

in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face.  How now,

he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, this smoking no longer

soothes.  Oh, my pipe!  hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone!  Here

have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring, --aye, and ignorantly

smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with such nervous

whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and

fullest of trouble.  What business have I with this pipe?  This thing that is

meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs,

not among torn iron-grey locks like mine.  I'll smoke no more-- He tossed the

still lighted pipe into the sea.  The fire hissed in the waves; the same

instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made.  With slouched hat,

Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.

.. <p 127 >

