Old Age Is Always Wakeful

Old age is always wakeful, as if the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea commanders, the old graybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night cloaked deck. It was so with ahab, only that now of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air that, truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin than from the cabin to the planks.