Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring,—aye, and
ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with
such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were
the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this
pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white
vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like
mine. I’ll smoke no more—”

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the
waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe
made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.




CHAPTER XXXI. QUEEN MAB


Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.

“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man’s
ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to
kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And
then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept
kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask—you know how
curious all dreams are—through all this rage that I was in, I somehow
seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an