Ahab's Adventure's In Wonderland; or The Rabbit

Chapter Twenty

It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, descended from the cabin porch to the front yard. There most landlords usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden.

Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon path-stones so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like geological fossils, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.

But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the front gate and now at the cellar door, you could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement.

The hours wore on;--Ahab now shut up within the cabin; anon, pacing the yard, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.

It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to gather everybody before him.

'Sir!' said the foreman, astonished at an order seldom or never given on the farm except in some extraordinary case.

'Gather everybody here,' repeated Ahab.

When the entire farm's company were assembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the fields, and then darting his eyes among the men, started from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns through the yard. With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men; till Starbuck cautiously whispered that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:--

'What do ye do when ye see a rabbit, men?'

'Sing out for him!' was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices.

'Good!' cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them.

'And what do ye next, men?'

'Go for our guns and chase after him!'

More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the countenance of the old man at every shout; while the farmhands began to gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.

But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving on his pivot, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:--

'All ye watchmen have before now heard me give orders about a white rabbit. Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?'--holding up a broad bright coin to the sun--'it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D'ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.'

While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.