The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard.
A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,
who somehow seemed to think that the great Leviathans had personally
and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort
of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered.
So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels
of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything
like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering them;
that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species
of magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a little
circumvention and some small application of time and trouble in order
to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his
made him a little waggish in the matter of whales; he followed
these fish for the fun of it; and a three years' voyage round
Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time.
As a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails;
so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one
of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long.
They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod; because, in form,
he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name
in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side
timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy
concussions of those battering seas.
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