Moby Dick: Chapters 24-28

Chapter 24: The Advocate

Whale ships have a dirty rep...how is this possible? They provide the world's candles, explore the world's frontiers.

...here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Chapter 25: Postscript

sperm oil = sweetest of all oils = oil to anoint kings

Chapter 26: Knights and Squires

Knights:

• first mate: Starbuck: thinness...no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares; pure tight skin was ... embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian [ha...Death warmed over] thought...courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted

God is democratic.

Chapter 27: Knights and Squires

More Knights:

• second mate: Stubb: happy-go-lucky; neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand
• third mate: Flask: very pugnacious concerning whales; ignorant, unconscious fearlessness...in the matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it

Squires:

• Queequeg harpooneer to Starbuck
• Tashtego to Stubb: unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of red men; unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires.
• Daggoo to Flask: a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like tread; Flask looked like a chess-man beside him

...the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores.

Chapter 28: Ahab

Ahab!

He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze...

Upon each side of the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there was an Auger: a drill-shaped device used for moving material or liquid along its rotating threads ">auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance.

OK then.