Captain Ahab often paces the quarter-deck between the compass and the mainmast. A gold doubloon is nailed to the mast as a prize for whoever catches Moby Dick. The crew treats it like a sacred talisman. No one steals it, even on dark nights. One morning Ahab stops and really studies the coin for the first time. It was minted in Ecuador and shows three Andes mountain peaks, a flame, a tower, a rooster, and a zodiac ring with the sun at Libra.
Ahab says the tower, volcano, and brave bird are all pictures of himself. He thinks the coin mirrors each man's secret self like a magic glass. He sees storms ahead as the sun moves from Aries into Libra. Starbuck looks next and whispers that devil's claws must have shaped the gold. He sees a dark valley between holy peaks and a sad sun of righteousness, then walks away before the truth shakes him. Stubb laughs and reads the zodiac signs as one chapter of human life, from birth through trouble to sleep, and stays cheerful.
Flask sees only money. He figures the coin is worth sixteen dollars, or nine hundred sixty cigars. The old Manx sailor mutters about signs and a horseshoe nailed on the other side of the mast. He thinks the whale must be raised when the sun stands in the lion sign. Queequeg compares the coin to his tattoos and decides it is just an old button. Fedallah bows to the sun stamped on the gold. Pip, still broken from his castaway ordeal, chants grammar: I look, you look, he looks. Then he calls everyone bats, himself a crow, and mocks Ahab as a scarecrow made of bones in old clothes.
Ishmael calls the doubloon the ship's navel. Everyone wants to unscrew it, but it is nailed there as a sign that things have grown desperate. One gold coin sits at the center of the ship, and every sailor reads a different sermon into it.
