Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants’ hall of the high and
mighty cabin.

In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless
invisible domineerings of the captain’s table, was the entire care-free
license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior
fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid
of the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed
their food with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined
like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading
with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that
to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale
Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly
quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he
did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an
ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back,
harpoonwise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted
Dough-Boy’s memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head
into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand,