The Cabin — Moby-Dick

Leaving the cabin, Pip catches Ahab's hand to follow. Ahab forbids it. The hour nears when he would not scare Pip yet cannot have him aboard. Pip's sanity would cure Ahab's malady, but for this hunt sickness is health. Pip must abide below as captain, sit the screwed chair, even be another screw to it while servants treat him like the master of the cabin gangway.

Pip begs Ahab to tread on him like the lost leg so he can stay part of the captain. Ahab swears fadeless fidelity to man, black and crazy, and thinks like-cures-like may heal Pip too. Pip recalls Stubb deserting him when drowned bones showed white for all the blackness of his living skin. Ahab threatens murder if weeping continues, promises his ivory foot on deck as proof he is still present, blesses Pip, yet still forbids follow.

Alone, Pip stands in Ahab's air, tries the boltless door that will not open though it has no lock, sits by the transom in the ship's middle, hallucinates epaulets and decanters hosting white captains, names cowards without naming names, hears ivory overhead like judgment, and vows to stay though the stern strikes rocks and oysters come to join him.