When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood awhile leaning over the bulwarks, then as had been usual with him of late called a sailor of the watch and sent him below for his ivory stool and also his pipe; lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked while Ishmael, looking on, remembers old Norse tradition that Danish sea-kings' thrones were fabricated of narwhale tusks: how could one behold Ahab seated on that tripod of bones without bethinking him of royalty, for a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, thick vapor coming from his mouth in quick constant puffs that blew back again into his face until he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube: this smoking no longer soothes; here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring, ignorantly smoking to windward all the while, with such nervous whiffs as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble.
What business have I with this pipe, he asks, this thing meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine; I'll smoke no more, and the renunciation is not gentle philosophy but disgust at a tool built for another man's peace.
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea; the fire hissed in the waves, the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made, and with slouched hat Ahab lurchingly paced the planks, no calmer than before the stool was fetched: when Stubb wakes from Queen Mab tomorrow, will his dream read this discarded bowl as omen or as proof the captain's comfort is already gone?
Coming Up in Chapter 31
Next morning Stubb corners Flask with the strangest dream he ever had: Ahab kicks him with the ivory leg, a merman lectures him to take kicks as honors, and Ahab shouts to the mast-head about a white whale.
