For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew,
were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any
of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences
had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this--and rightly
ascribed it--to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild
Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked.
But it was especially the aspect of the three chief officers
of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated
to allay these colorless misgivings, and induce confidence
and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage.
Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his
own different way, could not readily be found, and they were
every one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder,
a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot
from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather,
though all the time running away from it to the southward;
and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed,
gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable
weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering,
but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition,
when with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water
with a vindictive sort of leaping and melancholy rapidity,
that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon watch,
so soon as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail,
foreboding shivers ran over me.
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