Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage
(by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man),
the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest
prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for
their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck,
together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work;
though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a less
rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind
how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may,
in some primitive instances, live together; for all that,
the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarter-deck
are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away.
Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see
the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur
not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost
as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple,
and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth.
And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod
was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption;
and though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit,
instantaneous obedience; though he required no man to remove
the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarter-deck;
and though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances
connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed
them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or in terrorem,
or otherwise; yet even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant
of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.
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