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Curious to tell , this imperial negro , Ahasuerus Daggoo , was the Squire of little Flask , who looked like a chess - man beside him . As for the residue of the Pequod’s company , be it said , that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery , are Americans born , though pretty nearly all the officers are . Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies , and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads . The same , I say , because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains , the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles . No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores , where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores . In like manner , the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London , put in at the Shetland Islands , to receive the full complement of their crew . Upon the passage homewards , they drop them there again . How it is , there is no telling , but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen . They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod , Isolatoes too , I call such , not acknowledging the common continent of men , but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own . Yet now , federated along one keel , what a set these Isolatoes were ! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea , and all the ends of the earth , accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world’s grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back . Black Little Pip — he never did — oh , no ! he went before . Poor Alabama boy ! On the grim Pequod’s forecastle , ye shall ere long see him , beating his tambourine ; prelusive of the eternal time , when sent for , to the great quarter - deck on high , he was bid strike in with angels , and beat his tambourine in glory ; called a coward here , hailed a hero there ! CHAPTER 28 . Ahab . For several days after leaving Nantucket , nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab . The mates regularly relieved each other at the watches , and for aught that could be seen to the contrary , they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship ; only they sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory , that after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously . Yes , their supreme lord and dictator was there , though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin .
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