The sailors,
in tasselled caps of red worsted, were getting the heavy tackles
in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow
and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good humor.
All their noses upwardly projected from their faces like
so many jibbooms. Now and then pairs of them would drop
their work, and run up to the mast-head to get some fresh air.
Some thinking they would catch the plague, dipped oakum
in coal-tar, and at intervals held it to their nostrils.
Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short off
at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it
constantly filled their olfactories.
Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding
from the Captain's round-house abaft; and looking in that direction
saw a fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar
from within. This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain
remonstrating against the proceedings of the day, had betaken
himself to the Captain's round-house (cabinet he called it)
to avoid the pest; but still, could not help yelling out his
entreaties and indignations at times.
Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to
the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger
mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus,
who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle.
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