[Y]et for captain ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him
as a regular headsman in the hunt - above all for Captain Ahab to be
supplied with five extra men, as that same boat’s crew, he well knew
that such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of
the Pequod. … Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own
touching all that matter … yet that … Fedallah remained a muffled
mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this,
by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked
with Ahab’s peculiar fortunes; … all this none knew. But one cannot
sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature
as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their
dreams, and that but dimly…. (Chapter 50
—Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah) |