.. < chapter xxx 4  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.
..