I thought you a little boasted just now



But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that you meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now, if he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is going to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him overboard—tell me that? "Give him a good ducking, anyhow." "But he'd crawl back." "Duck him again; and keep ducking him." "Suppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though—yes, and drown you—what then?" "I should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of black eyes that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin again for a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives, and hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil, Flask; so you suppose I'm afraid of the devil? Who's afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor!" "Do you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?" "Do I suppose it? You'll know it before long, Flask. But I am going now to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very suspicious going on, I'll just take him by the nape of his neck, and say—Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord I'll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come short off at the stump—do you see; and then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion, he'll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs." "And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?" "Do with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;—what else?" "Now, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along, Stubb?" "Mean or not mean, here we are at the ship." The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side, where fluke chains

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