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"Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg* -- that's who ye are speaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know...

"I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself."

"Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain of this ship."

"Who is Captain Ahab, sir?"

"Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?"

"Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world."

"But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of shipping ye."

I saw that under the mask of these half humorous inuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard.

I protested my innocence of these things.

"Marchant service be ******. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that leg? -- I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships. But flukes...

"Nothing, sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I've been several voyages in the merchant service, and I think that---"

"Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say -- eh?"

"No, sir, I never have."

"Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer -- ever been in a stove boat?"

"I was thinking of shipping."

"Supposing it be the Captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of him?" he demanded.

"Is this the Captain of the Pequod?" said I, advancing to the door of the tent.

Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.

There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic network of the minutest wrinkles...

He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was constructed.