Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what may be called the first
table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure, taking place
in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared,
or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward.
And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being
its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants'
hall of the high and mighty cabin.
In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint
and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table,
was the entire care-free license and ease, the almost frantic
democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers.
While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound
of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed
their food with such a relish that there was a report to it.
They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian
ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites
had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made
by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring
on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.
And if he were not lively about it, if he did not go with a
nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly
way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back,
harpoon-wise.
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