Captain Ahab's Observance of the Forms and Usages of the Sea

The long period of a southern whaling voyage is by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made by man. Yet never mind how much like an old mesopotamian family, these whalemen may in some primitive instances, live together. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain's cabin and sleep in a place, indirectly communicating with it. For all that the punctilious externals, at least of the quarter deck, are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away. Many are the nantucket ships, in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military