Merry Christmas — Moby-Dick

Toward noon on Christmas, after the riggers are dismissed and the Pequod is hauled from the wharf, Aunt Charity comes off in a whale-boat with a night-cap for Stubb and a spare Bible for the steward; then Peleg and Bildad issue from the cabin and run the quarter-deck like joint commanders while Peleg asks Starbuck if Ahab is ready below and calls all hands to strike the tent, that whalebone marquee known for thirty years as the step just before heaving anchor, and to man the capstan with blood and thunder.

Forward, Bildad the licensed pilot sings dismal psalmody over the bows; aft, the windlass crew roars a chorus about girls in Booble Alley though Bildad forbade profane songs at getting under weigh only three days before and Charity placed Watts in every berth. Peleg, who scolds profanity, rips and swears along the windlass until Ishmael pauses on his handspike and feels a sharp poke in his rear: that was my first kick, he records, while imperturbable Bildad keeps leading off with hymn and Ishmael comforts himself that pious Bildad might yet save them until the boot proves otherwise.

The anchor rises, sails set, and a short cold Christmas merges into night on the wintry Atlantic whose freezing spray cases them in ice like polished armor; Bildad's steady notes about sweet fields beyond the swelling flood sound sweeter to Ishmael than ever, full of hope and vernal meads despite wet feet and wetter jacket, as if departure itself could promise haven before the hunt turns grim.

At last they gain an offing, the pilot-boat ranges alongside, and the owners who saved pilot fees by steering their own ship must peel off: Bildad lingers, paces, coils rope convulsively, grips Peleg by lantern light with dollars and dread in every glance, while Peleg promises hot supper in Nantucket in three years and hurries Bildad over the side mid-blessing about cooper staves, molasses tierce, sail-needles, cheese in the hold, butter at twenty cents, and Flask beware of fornication. Ship and boat diverge; three heavy-hearted cheers; they blindly plunge like fate into the lone Atlantic: who commands the Pequod now that the owners' boat is gone and Captain Ahab has never once shown his face on deck?