Moby Dick

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captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from
it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would elapse
ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck
would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his
captain's leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial
influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle
insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly
manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing
that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that
strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that
the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation
unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches,
his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby
Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the
announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less
capricious and unreliable--they live in the varying outer weather, and