Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath
to come; mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer
clear of the fiery pit!"
Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language,
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.
"Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,
cried Peleg. "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers--
it takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw
who aint pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine,
once the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket and
the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to good.
He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked
and sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case
he got stove and went to Davy Jones."
"Peleg! Peleg!" said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands,
"thou thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time;
thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death;
how, then, can'st thou prate in this ungodly guise.
Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod
here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan,
that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Ahab,
did'st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?"
"Hear him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin,
and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,--"hear him, all of ye.
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