Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore.

 

[Old Thunder]

How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.

 

[Old Thunder]

This world pays dividends.

 

[Old Thunder]

Rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooner in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income.

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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 descriptive of Bildad.

 

[Old Thunder]

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

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

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.

 

[Old Thunder]

Indolence and idleness perished from before him.