Moby Dick

Ismael, a restless young American sailor, goes to sea whenever the world on land turns grey on him. In the winter of 1850 he travels to New Bedford, takes a bed at the Spouter-Inn, and is forced to share it with a tattooed South Pacific harpooner named Queequeg. The two men become inseparable friends. After hearing Father Mapple preach on Jonah, they sail to Nantucket and sign on together with the *Pequod*, an old whaling ship trimmed with the ivory teeth of the whales it has killed. A ragged prophet named Elías warns them at the dock, but they board anyway.

For days the captain does not appear. When Acab finally comes on deck, he stands on a leg carved from a whale's jaw. He nails a gold doubloon to the mast and tells the crew the truth: this voyage is not for oil or profit. It is a hunt for one whale, the white sperm whale called Moby Dick, who took his leg. The crew roars its agreement. Only Starbuck, the honest first mate, sees the madness in it and says so.

The *Pequod* works its way across the Atlantic and into the Pacific. The crew kills ordinary whales and boils their blubber in the tryworks. They meet other ships and hear other warnings. A cabin boy named Pip is left briefly alone in the open sea and comes back changed. Queequeg falls ill, has a coffin built, and then recovers. Acab has a special harpoon forged and will not be turned aside — not by a broken quadrant, not by lightning in the rigging, not by a grieving captain begging help to find his lost son.

At last the white whale is sighted. The hunt lasts three days. Moby Dick destroys the boats, kills Acab, and staves in the *Pequod* itself. The ship goes down with every hand. Ismael alone survives, floating on Queequeg's coffin until another ship finds him.