บทที่ บทที่ 30 · The Pipe.

When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the

bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a

sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also

his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool

on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.

In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were

fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could

one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without

bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank,

and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.

Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth

in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. “How

now,” he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, “this smoking no

longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be

gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring—aye, and

ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with

such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were

the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this

pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white

vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like

mine. I’ll smoke no more—”

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the

waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe

made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.