A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most
part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter
of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude,
there were certain qualities in him which at times affected,
and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest.
Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep
natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did
therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort
of superstition, which in some organizations seems rather
to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance.
Outward portents and inward presentiments were his.
And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul,
much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape
wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original
ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent
influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush
of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more
perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man
in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."
By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable
and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation
of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man
is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
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