The Chart — Moby-Dick

After the squall and the crew's oath, Ahab goes to his cabin each night. He spreads wrinkled yellow sea charts and old log-books on his table. He studies lines, tides, and whale sightings, then redraws his course in pencil.

A rocking lamp throws moving shadows on his wrinkled brow. It looks as if an invisible hand is tracing lines on his forehead too.

Ahab is not hunting blindly. He knows sperm whales return to certain waters on a schedule. Hunters track migration paths called veins. If you know the season and the route, you can guess where whales may appear.

Moby Dick has been seen in many places, but one spot matters most. On the equator, during the Season-on-the-Line, the white whale often lingered. That is also where Ahab lost his leg.

Still, Ahab will not bet everything on one season alone. The Pequod left Nantucket early. Ahab plans a year of wide hunting, hoping wind and current may bring the whale into his path sooner.

At times even Ahab admits the quest sounds mad. How can one hunter pick out one whale in all the oceans? He answers that Moby Dick's white brow and scarred fins make him unmistakable.

After midnight he mutters tallies and throws himself into reveries. He wakes with bloody nail marks in his palms. Nightmares burst him from his cabin as if his bed were on fire.

Ishmael says Ahab's single purpose has become its own living creature. Intense thinking has hatched a monster inside the man. God help thee, old man.