wards; each owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of
plank, or a nail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest
their money in whaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in
approved state stocks bringing in good interest.

Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a
Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and
to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure
the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously
modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of
these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and
whale-hunters. They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a
vengeance.

So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with
Scripture names--a singularly common fashion on the island--and in
childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of
the Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless
adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these
unoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not
unworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And
when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force,
with a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the
stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest
waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been
led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all
nature's sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin
voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some
help from accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty
language--that man makes one in a whole nation's census--a mighty
pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it at all
detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other
circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness
at the bottom of his nature. For all men tragically great are made
so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition,
all mortal greatness is but disease. But, as yet we have not to do
with such an one, but with quite another; and still a man, who, if
indeed peculiar, it only results again from another phase of the
Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.

Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired
whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg--who cared not a rush for what
are called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious
things the veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not only been
originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket
Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many
unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn--all that had not
moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as
altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness,
was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain
Peleg. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms
against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the
Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet
had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of
leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days,
the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do
not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably
he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a
man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.
This world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabin-boy in short
clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied
waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain,
and finally a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded
his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the
goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet
receiving of his well-earned income.

Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an
incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard
task-master. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a
curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his
crew, upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the
hospital, sore exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially
for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the
least. He never used to swear, though, at his men, they said; but
somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work
out of them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured
eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till
you could clutch something--a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to
work like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and
idleness perished before him. His own person was the exact
embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he
carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft,
economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat.

Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I
followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the
decks was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always
sat so, and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails. His
broad-brim was placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his
drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he
seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.

"Bildad," cried Captain Peleg, "at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have
been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my
certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?"

As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate,
Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up,
and seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.


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