"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab.  When the entire
ship's company were assembled, he cried:--

     "What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"

     "Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a
score of clubbed voices.

     "Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones;
observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected
question had so magnetically thrown them.

     "And what do ye do next, men?"

     "Lower away, and after him!"

     "And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"

     "A dead whale or a stove boat!"

     "Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a
wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me
that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his
starboard fluke -- look ye, whosoever of ye raises that same
white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!"

     "Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that white whale must
be the same that some call Moby Dick."

     "Moby Dick?" shouted Ahab.  "Do ye know the white whale
then, Tash?"

     "Captain Ahab", said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and
Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing
surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which
somewhat explained all the wonder.  "Captain Ahab, I have
heard of Moby Dick -- but it was not Moby Dick that took off
thy leg?"

     "Who told thee that?" cried Ahab.  "Aye, aye!  and I'll
chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the
Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give
him up.  And this is what ye have shipped for, men!  to
chase the white whale on both sides of land, and over all
sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin
out.  What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now?  I
think ye do look brave."

     "Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooners and the seamen,
running closer to the excited old man: "A sharp eye for the
White Whale; a sharp lance for Moby Dick!"

     "God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout.
"God bless ye, men.  Steward!  go draw the great measure of
grog.  But what's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt
thou not chase the white whale?  art not game for Moby
Dick?"

     "I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of
Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of
the business we follow; but I came here to hunt whales, not
my commander's vengeance.  How many barrels will thy
vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab?
it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.
Vengeance on a dumb brute!", cried Starbuck, "that simply
smote thee from blindest instinct!  Madness!  To be enraged
with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."

     "Hark ye yet again.  All visible objects, man, are but
as pasteboard masks.  But in each event -- in the living
act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown but still
reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features
from behind the unreasoning mask.  If a man will strike,
strike through the mask!  How can the prisoner reach outside
except by thrusting through the wall?  To me, the white
whale is that wall, shoved near to me.  Sometimes I think
there's naught beyond.  But 'tis enough.  He tasks me; he
heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an
inscrutable malice sinewing it.  That inscrutable thing is
chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the
white whale principal, I will wreck that hate upon him.
Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it
insulted me."

                                           --from Chapter 36