For days after we left Nantucket, nobody caught so much as a glimpse of Captain Ahab above the ship’s hatches.
The mates took turns keeping watch, just like normal. To anyone watching, they looked like the ones running the whole ship.
Still, every now and then they would step out of the captain’s cabin and bark out sharp, urgent orders. It made it obvious they were only giving commands for someone else.
Their real boss, the man in charge of everything, was hidden down in that cabin. No one got to lay eyes on him unless they had permission to step inside that private, off‑limits space.
Every time I climbed up on deck after my shift below, my eyes would dart straight toward the back of the ship. I kept searching for some strange new figure.
Out here on the open ocean, my vague unease about this unknown captain had grown into real restlessness.
Oddly enough, the crazy, rambling warnings from that ragged old man Elijah kept popping unbidden into my head. Those haunted thoughts weighed on me far more than I ever would have expected.
Sometimes I could almost laugh off that weird old waterfront prophet and his wild talk. But right now, I could not shake those uneasy feelings.
Still, whenever I looked around the ship, I told myself I had no good reason to feel spooked.
The harpooners and most of the crew were rough, wild‑looking men from all sorts of backgrounds. They were nothing like the calm, orderly sailors I had met on regular merchant ships.
I told myself that was just how whaling was. This brutal, dangerous line of work attracted exactly this kind of men, and that made perfect sense.
What calmed my worries most of all were the three mates. Those three officers gave me real confidence about our voyage.
You could not ask for better seamen. Each one was strong in his own way, and all three were Americans: one from Nantucket, one from Martha’s Vineyard, one from Cape Cod.
We pulled out of harbor on Christmas Day. For a while, bitter, freezing arctic‑style winds battered us, even as we sailed steadily south.
With every degree of latitude we travelled, we left that cruel winter and its terrible weather farther and farther behind us.
It was one of those dull grey mornings as the seasons shifted. The sky was not fully stormy, but it felt gloomy all the same. A good wind pushed the ship hard across the waves. We surged forward in a strange, grim rush.
I came topside for my morning watch. The second my gaze landed on the ship’s rear deck, cold shivers ran down my spine.
My worst fears had come true. Captain Ahab was standing there on the quarter‑deck.
He did not look like a man sick with some ordinary illness, nor like someone recovering from injury.
He reminded me of a figure tied to a burning stake. Fire had scorched every limb, yet never burned them away. All his aged, solid strength still remained.
Tall and broad‑shouldered, he looked as though he had been cast from solid bronze, fixed forever in one shape, just like Cellini’s famous statue of Perseus.
A thin, pale‑white scar snaked out from amongst his grey hair. It ran down one side of his sun‑browned face and neck, vanishing under his clothes.
It looked exactly like the mark lightning leaves on a tall tree. A bolt rips down the trunk, strips away bark, yet never snaps off a single branch. The tree stays alive, but it carries that permanent burn mark forever.
Nobody knew for sure if that mark was a birthmark, or the scar left from some terrible fight.
Everyone on board silently agreed not to speak of it, especially the mates.
One old Gay‑Head Indian sailor had a superstitious theory. “Ahab didn’t get that mark till he turned forty,” he said. “It didn’t come from fighting other men. The sea itself fought him, and left that brand.”
An old quiet Manx sailor disagreed, in his own dark way. He had never laid eyes on Ahab before this voyage. But the old sailors believed he could see things ordinary men could not.
That old Manxman claimed that if Ahab ever lay dead and still — which he muttered would probably never happen — whoever prepared his body for burial would find that mark ran all the way from the top of his head down to the soles of his feet.
I was so stunned by Ahab’s grim face and that livid scar, that at first I barely noticed another shocking detail. A huge part of that harsh, intimidating look came from his artificial leg, carved from whalebone.
I had heard rumours already: it was made from the polished jawbone of a sperm whale.
The old Gay‑Head Indian had mentioned it once. “He lost his real leg out near Japan. But just like a ship that loses a mast, he fitted a new one, no need to sail home first. He keeps a whole spare set of those bone legs.”
His stance was strange and rigid.
On both sides of the quarter‑deck, close to the mizzen rigging, small holes had been drilled half‑an‑inch deep into the wooden planks. He would slot the end of his bone leg firmly down into one of those holes.
One hand gripped the ship’s ropes. He stood completely upright, staring straight past the ship’s constantly rocking bow, out toward the open sea.
There was unbelievable stubborn resolve in that stare. Nothing would make him turn away.
He said not a single word. None of his officers dared speak to him either. But every small movement and expression they made showed how uneasy they felt under their troubled captain’s gaze.
Ahab stood before them, carrying some great, unspoken sorrow written all over his face. There was a terrible, king‑like weight to his grief.
Soon after that first appearance, he went back down into his cabin.
But from that morning onward, the crew saw him every single day. Sometimes he stood braced in that wooden hole. Sometimes he sat on his little ivory stool. Sometimes he paced heavily across the deck.
As the sky brightened and the weather grew kinder, he stayed above decks more and more. It felt as if only the bitter winter ocean had kept him locked away in his cabin back when we first left home.
After a while, he spent nearly all his time out in the open air. Even so, he hardly spoke or did anything obvious up on that sunny deck. He was as quiet and un‑involved as an extra mast sticking out of the ship.
Right now the Pequod was just travelling, not actively hunting whales. All the routine whaling work that needed overseeing was well within the mates’ abilities.
There was almost nothing for Ahab to do. Nothing could pull his mind away from those heavy, dark thoughts that clung to him like storm clouds gathering on a high mountain peak.
Slowly, the warm, pleasant weather seemed to lift his dark mood a little.
Think of rough, storm‑bitten old oak trees. When spring arrives, even the most beaten‑up old oak will push out a few small green shoots to greet the warmer air.
In much the same way, Ahab softened, just barely, under this gentle, bright atmosphere.
More than once, a faint hint of warmth flickered across his face. On any other man, that look would have bloomed straight into a smile.