Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then,
a conversation was sustained between the two parties;
but at intervals not without still another interruption of a
very different sort.
Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular appearance,
even in that wild whaling life where individual notabilities make up
all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all
over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow hair.
A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped
him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists.
A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.
So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed--
"That's he! that's he!--the long-togged scaramouch the Town-Ho's company
told us of!" Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam,
and a certain man among her crew, some time previous when the Pequod spoke
the Town-Ho. According to this account and what was subsequently learned,
it seemed that the scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful
ascendency over almost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story was this:
He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of
Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked,
secret meetings having several times descended from heaven by the way
of a trapdoor, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial,
which he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of
containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum.
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