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But I said nothing, only looking round me sharply.

I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer.

"He'll do," said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at his book in a mumbling tone quite audible.

"What do ye think of him, Bildad?" said Peleg.

"I dost," said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.

"Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me.

"He says he's our man, Bildad," said Peleg, "he wants to ship."

As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate, Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg.

"Bildad," cried Captain Peleg, "at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?"

His broad-brim was placed beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume.

The space between the decks was small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and never leaned, and this to save his coat tails.

Such, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin.

On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat.

His own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character.

Indolence and idleness perished from before him.

When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch something -- a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something or other, never mind what.

He never used to swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them.

For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least.

They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut* whaleman, his crew, upon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted and worn out. *The Categut is the North Sea between Jutland and Sweden; here...

Now Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard taskmaster.