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CHAPTER 26 . Knights and Squires . The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck , a native of Nantucket , and a Quaker by descent . He was a long , earnest man , and though born on an icy coast , seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes , his flesh being hard as twice - baked biscuit . Transported to the Indies , his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale . He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine , or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous . Only some thirty arid summers had he seen ; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness . But this , his thinness , so to speak , seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares , than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight . It was merely the condensation of the man . He was by no means ill - looking ; quite the contrary . His pure tight skin was an excellent fit ; and closely wrapped up in it , and embalmed with inner health and strength , like a revivified Egyptian , this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come , and to endure always , as now ; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun , like a patent chronometer , his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates . Looking into his eyes , you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand - fold perils he had calmly confronted through life . A staid , steadfast man , whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action , and not a tame chapter of sounds . Yet , for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude , there were certain qualities in him which at times affected , and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest . Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman , and endued with a deep natural reverence , the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition ; but to that sort of superstition , which in some organizations seems rather to spring , somehow , from intelligence than from ignorance . Outward portents and inward presentiments were his . And if at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul , much more did his far - away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child , tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature , and open him still further to those latent influences which , in some honest - hearted men , restrain the gush of dare - devil daring , so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery . “ I will have no man in my boat , ” said Starbuck , “ who is not afraid of a whale . ” By this , he seemed to mean , not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril , but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward . “ Aye , aye , ” said Stubb , the second mate , “ Starbuck , there , is as careful a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery . ” But we shall ere long see what that word “ careful ” precisely means when used by a man like Stubb , or almost any other whale hunter .
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