Volume 50, Number 7 · May 1, 2003
Leviathan
By Jason Epstein
Not many days out to sea and beyond the reach of his parsimonious owners, Captain Ahab of the Nantucket whaler Pequod called his officers and crew together on the afterdeck to announce a change of plans. Instead of filling his hold with oil and returning safely home, he will subordinate the fiscal point of the voyage to a preemptive first strike against evil, embodied, he claimed, in a particular whale of an unusual color which in a previous encounter had torn his leg away. To his obedient if puzzled crew Ahab offered a Spanish ounce of gold to the first man to spot Moby-Dick but otherwise said nothing about the economic consequences to the 'others of his plan or about the possibility of disaster. Only the first mate, Starbuck, demurred: 'I came here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance,' he said, and asked, 'How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab?' But Ahab scorned him and beat his chest, which to Stubb, the second mate, 'rang most vast but hollow.'
Feature, 1685 words
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