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appellative, it stood something like this:--

Quohog.
his X mark.

Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing
Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge
pockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts,
and selecting one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to
Lose," placed it in Queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the
book with both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "Son of
darkness, I must do my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship,
and feel concerned for the souls of all its crew; if thou still
clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear, I beseech thee,
remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and the
hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say;
oh! goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!"

Something of the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language,
heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.

"Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our
harpooneer," Peleg. "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers--it
takes the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint
pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest
boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the
meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened about his
plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear
of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones."

"Peleg! Peleg!" said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, "thou
thyself, as I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest,
Peleg, what it is to have the fear of death; how, then, can'st thou
prate in this ungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg.
Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts overboard in
that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with
Captain Ahab, did'st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?"

"Hear him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and
thrusting his hands far down into his pockets,--"hear him, all of ye.
Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink!
Death and the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such
an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking
over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No!
no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I
was thinking of; and how to save all hands--how to rig
jury-masts--how to get into the nearest port; that was what I was
thinking of."

Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck,
where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some
sailmakers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then he
stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which
otherwise might have been wasted.



CHAPTER 19

The Prophet.


"Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?"

Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from
the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when

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