Queen Mab — Moby-Dick

Wise Stubb is what the hunchbacked merman mutters only after Stubb refuses to kick a stern stuck full of marlinspikes, and that refrain is the spine of the Queen Mab dream Stubb unloads on Flask next morning, shaggy with laughter yet serious as counsel after Ahab's heel rage: in sleep the captain kicks him with the ivory leg, Stubb kicks back and kicks his own leg off, and Ahab becomes a pyramid he keeps battering while part of his dreaming mind insists a dead thump from whalebone cane cannot carry the living insult of flesh, that a farmer's broad boot would shame him more than this whittled point of ivory foot.

The merman spins him round, argues the kick was right good will from a great man with a beautiful leg, says English lords prize a queen's slap and Stubb should account Ahab's kick an honor and on no account kick back against a monument that will not move; Stubb snores, rolls over in his hammock, and tells Flask the foolish dream made a wise man of him, that the best thing is to let the old man alone and never speak to him whatever he says, while Flask answers the whole yarn seems a sort of foolish to him though.

Before Flask can push back they hear Ahab shout to the mast-head that whales are hereabouts and any lookout who spies a white one should split his lungs for him; Stubb marks the color, tells Flask something special is in the wind and the captain has something bloody on his mind, then goes mum as Ahab comes this way: will Flask treat Stubb's converted silence as private survival or as the rule every junior mate must learn?