Chapter 1
Chapter 1 — Loomings
Ishmael introduces himself, his November mood, and the compulsion that sends him toward the sea and a whaling ship.
Moby-Dick — chapter by chapter
All 136 chapters, from New Bedford to the three-day chase — the complete voyage of the Pequod.
Moby-Dick divides naturally into four movements. The shore chapters in New Bedford and Nantucket — Ishmael, Queequeg, Father Mapple's sermon — are among the most loved in American literature. The open-ocean first hunt introduces the ship's world. The vast cetological middle accumulates the pressure the closing chase requires; Melville is not padding. The three-day chase (Chapters 133-135) and the Epilogue are what those hundred chapters of preparation are for.
On Shore
New Bedford and Nantucket — Ishmael, Queequeg, Father Mapple, and the Pequod at the dock.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 — The Carpet-Bag
Ishmael arrives broke in New Bedford on a December night and hunts for cheap lodging, ending at the foreboding Spouter-Inn.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 — The Spouter-Inn
The Spouter-Inn's mysterious painting, its walls of weapons, and the alarming problem of sharing a bed with an unknown harpooner.
Chapter 4
Chapter 4 — The Counterpane
Morning light: Queequeg's arm across him, a childhood memory of a supernatural hand, and the first warmth of an unlikely friendship.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 — Breakfast
The whalemen's breakfast table, gradations of sea-tan in sunburned faces, and Queequeg eating politely with his harpoon.
Chapter 6
Chapter 6 — The Street
The cosmopolitan variety of New Bedford's streets, and the comic spectacle of country boys reinventing themselves as sailors.
Chapter 7
Chapter 7 — The Chapel
Memorial tablets to drowned whalemen line the chapel walls; each inscription is a reckoning with odds that Ishmael cannot dismiss.
Chapter 8
Chapter 8 — The Pulpit
Father Mapple ascends his rope-ladder pulpit, hauls it up behind him, and isolates himself — a gesture Ishmael reads as theological statement.
Chapter 9
Chapter 9 — The Sermon
Father Mapple's Jonah sermon: the cost of fleeing God's call, and the harder lesson of the pilot who must defy captain and crew when truth demands it.
Chapter 10
Chapter 10 — A Bosom Friend
Ishmael returns from the chapel to find Queequeg counting a book's pages with grave ceremony, and the friendship is sealed without a word of arrangement.
Chapter 11
Chapter 11 — Nightgown
A cold winter night, a warm shared bed, two men talking with no agenda — Ishmael decides this is better than most of what the civilized world offers.
Chapter 12
Chapter 12 — Biographical
Queequeg's biography: a Pacific prince who forced his way onto a whaling ship to see the Christian world, and was disappointed by what he found.
Chapter 13
Chapter 13 — Wheelbarrow
On the way to the Nantucket packet, Queequeg tells two stories of cultural misunderstanding that level the playing field between savage and civilized.
Chapter 14
Chapter 14 — Nantucket
A short prose-poem saluting Nantucket — a bare sandbar that became, by audacity and fishing tradition, the capital of the world's whale fishery.
Chapter 15
Chapter 15 — Chowder
The Try Pots inn at Nantucket serves nothing but chowder — clam or cod — and Ishmael finds this the most satisfying thing imaginable.
Chapter 16
Chapter 16 — The Ship
Ishmael chooses the Pequod — ancient, ivory-decorated, manned by long-experienced whalemen — and meets the ship's Quaker owners, Bildad and Peleg.
Chapter 17
Chapter 17 — The Ramadan
Queequeg's day-long religious fast locks Ishmael out of the room; the door is eventually broken down to find Queequeg perfectly composed on the floor.
Chapter 18
Chapter 18 — His Mark
Peleg demands Queequeg's conversion papers; Queequeg answers by harpooning a distant oil spot in the harbor with inhuman precision.
Chapter 19
Chapter 19 — The Prophet
Elijah — a ragged stranger who knows Captain Ahab — intercepts Ishmael and Queequeg on the wharf and warns them, obliquely, about what they are joining.
Chapter 20
Chapter 20 — All Astir
The Pequod loads out for a three-year voyage: provisions, rope, canvas, and the persistent charitable attentions of Captain Bildad's sister.
Chapter 21
Chapter 21 — Going Aboard
Departure morning, gray light, and Elijah's last appearance — warning of shadowy figures who may have boarded the Pequod in the dark.
Chapter 22
Chapter 22 — Merry Christmas
The Pequod sails Christmas Day: Bildad distributing tracts to the last, Peleg cursing, and Ahab invisible in the cabin as the ship clears harbor.
The First Hunt
The Pequod sails. Ahab appears, nails the doubloon, and reveals what the voyage is really for.
Chapter 23
Chapter 23 — The Lee Shore
An elegy for Bulkington, who returned from four years at sea and immediately signed on again — Melville's hymn to the person who can only live in the open ocean.
Chapter 24
Chapter 24 — The Advocate
Ishmael constructs a formal legal defense of the whale fishery's dignity, building to the revelation that sperm oil anoints the monarchs of the world.
Chapter 25
Chapter 25 — Postscript
One page, three paragraphs: the coronation oil is confirmed as sperm oil, and the whaleman's dignity is established beyond further argument.
Chapter 26
Chapter 26 — Knights and Squires
Starbuck: the first mate's practical courage, his Quaker gravity, and the weight of dead men behind every decision he makes at sea.
Chapter 27
Chapter 27 — Knights and Squires
Stubb and Flask, and the three harpooneers — Queequeg the Polynesian, Tashtego the Wampanoag, Daggoo the African — the multinational core of the Pequod's crew.
Chapter 28
Chapter 28 — Ahab
Ahab appears on deck: a scarred, rigid figure with an ivory leg and a silence so complete it transforms the entire atmosphere of the ship.
Chapter 29
Chapter 29 — Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb
Stubb tries gently to mention that the ivory leg disturbs his sleep; Ahab tells him, with total contempt, to go back to his kennel.
Chapter 30
Chapter 30 — The Pipe
Ahab lights his pipe on deck, finds it brings no pleasure whatsoever, and throws it into the sea — the obsession has consumed even small comforts.
Chapter 31
Chapter 31 — Queen Mab
Stubb recounts his dream of being kicked by Ahab's ivory leg, then turning the captain into a pyramid — and concludes never to speak to him again.
Chapter 32
Chapter 32 — Cetology
A complete classification of whale species, in which every authority disagrees and Ishmael's own system — Folio, Octavo, Duodecimo — proves no more final than the rest.
Chapter 33
Chapter 33 — The Specksnyder
The old Specksnyder and the sociology of whale-ship authority — and a quiet meditation on how theatrical power works when the audience is willing to be swept up.
Chapter 34
Chapter 34 — The Cabin-Table
Dinner in the cabin: the mates eat in paralyzed silence under Ahab's eye, then go below to eat again — noisily and happily — with the harpooneers.
Chapter 35
Chapter 35 — The Mast-Head
A comic history of mast-head watchers turns into a philosophical warning: dreamers make the worst lookouts.
Chapter 36
Chapter 36 — The Quarter-Deck
Ahab reveals everything. The crew swears the oath. The doubloon is nailed to the mast. The real voyage begins.
Chapter 37
Chapter 37 — Sunset
Ahab watches the sunset and discovers he cannot feel it. Beauty is agony when you cannot enjoy it.
Chapter 38
Chapter 38 — Dusk
Starbuck's counter-soliloquy: he sees the catastrophe coming and cannot make himself stop it.
Chapter 39
Chapter 39 — First Night-Watch
Stubb mends rope in the dark and decides predestination makes everything easier. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Chapter 40
Chapter 40 — Midnight, Forecastle
Sailors from a dozen nations sing and fight on deck at midnight, until a squall silences them all.
Chapter 41
Chapter 41 — Moby Dick
The white whale's legend assembled: real attacks, wild rumors, and the injury that broke Ahab and made him a prophet.
Chapter 42
Chapter 42 — The Whiteness of the Whale
Whiteness can mean anything: purity, horror, void. The whale is white. That is the problem.
Chapter 43
Chapter 43 — Hark!
A noise from below hatches. Two sailors hear it. No one in authority wants to know.
Chapter 44
Chapter 44 — The Chart
Ahab at his charts by lamplight, threading ocean currents and whale migrations — the obsessive as scientist.
Chapter 45
Chapter 45 — The Affidavit
Documented proof: famous whales, recovered harpoons, destroyed ships. Moby Dick is not a fantasy.
Chapter 46
Chapter 46 — Surmises
Ahab thinks ahead: how to keep the crew loyal to the hunt when the oath's heat has faded.
Chapter 47
Chapter 47 — The Mat-Maker
Weaving a mat in afternoon calm, Ishmael thinks about fate and free will — until a cry from the mast-head ends all philosophy.
Chapter 48
Chapter 48 — The First Lowering
Boats down, whale sighted — and Ahab's secret crew surfaces for the first time. The whale escapes into a squall.
Chapter 49
Chapter 49 — The Hyena
Just capsized and nearly drowned, Ishmael decides whaling is a cosmic joke and rewrites his will. He feels better.
Chapter 50
Chapter 50 — Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah
Stubb and Flask puzzle over Fedallah while Ishmael explains why whaling captains shouldn't chase whales — and Ahab does anyway.
Cetological Middle
The encyclopedic heart of the book — whales, the fishery, whiteness, the gam chapters, and the philosophy that makes the ending possible.
Chapter 51
Chapter 51 — The Spirit-Spout
A silver spout appears each midnight on the horizon, always ahead, always gone before the ship can reach it.
Chapter 52
Chapter 52 — The Albatross
First gam: another ship appears, ghostly and bleached, but the captain's trumpet falls into the sea before he can answer Ahab's one question.
Chapter 53
Chapter 53 — The Gam
The gam explained: the beautiful mid-ocean tradition of ships visiting and sharing news. Ahab has abolished it except for one question.
Chapter 54
Chapter 54 — The Town-Ho's Story
A ship, a mutiny, a brutal officer, and Moby Dick arriving at exactly the right moment to settle accounts no human justice could reach.
Chapter 55
Chapter 55 — Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales
Every painting of a whale ever made is wrong. Ishmael surveys the historical record with comic despair.
Chapter 56
Chapter 56 — Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
Four published outlines, one better than the rest — but the only true whale portrait must be painted on the ocean itself.
Chapter 57
Chapter 57 — Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars
Whales in scrimshaw, weathervanes, mountains, and stars — the whale is everywhere in human culture, mostly unnoticed.
Chapter 58
Chapter 58 — Brit
The Pequod sails through golden fields of brit — whale food — and Ishmael sees the ocean as the oldest and most indifferent enemy of man.
Chapter 59
Chapter 59 — Squid
A giant white mass rises from the sea — the crew reaches for weapons — but it is only a squid, Queequeg says, and sperm whales follow.
Chapter 60
Chapter 60 — The Line
The whale-line: two-thirds of an inch thick, three tons of breaking strain, and every man in the boat is already inside its coils.
Chapter 61
Chapter 61 — Stubb Kills a Whale
Stubb's boat, the first iron, the long chase — and then the lance, the blood, and the whale's death-flurry in a red sea.
Chapter 62
Chapter 62 — The Dart
Why does the man who must throw the harpoon have to row the boat first? Ishmael files a formal protest against whaling tradition.
Chapter 63
Chapter 63 — The Crotch
The crotch, the second iron, and the reason that once a whale is struck, a free harpoon becomes a random killing machine.
Chapter 64
Chapter 64 — Stubb's Supper
Stubb eats whale steak over the whale's carcass by lantern light while sharks churn beneath him. He makes the cook preach to them.
Chapter 65
Chapter 65 — The Whale as a Dish
A brief history of eating whale: a French delicacy, a royal sauce — but a hundred feet long and mostly oil is a problem.
Chapter 66
Chapter 66 — The Shark Massacre
Queequeg hangs over the ship's side in darkness, killing sharks with a spade to save the whale-carcass from being stripped overnight.
Chapter 67
Chapter 67 — Cutting In
Sunday on a whaler: the ship becomes a slaughterhouse, and the dead whale is peeled of its blubber in one long spiral strip.
Chapter 68
Chapter 68 — The Blanket
The whale's blubber is eight to fifteen inches thick and covered in faint hieroglyphic lines. Nobody can read them.
Chapter 69
Chapter 69 — The Funeral
The stripped whale's white carcass drifts toward the horizon, becoming a ghost-ship scare for every vessel that spots it — a corpse that haunts the charts.
Chapter 70
Chapter 70 — The Sphynx
Ahab addresses the severed sperm whale's head as a Sphinx, demanding the secrets of the deep — and receives only silence in return.
Chapter 71
Chapter 71 — The Jeroboam's Story
The Jeroboam arrives ruled by a self-proclaimed prophet who has banned the crew from hunting Moby Dick — and already paid with a dead mate.
Chapter 72
Chapter 72 — The Monkey-Rope
Tied to Queequeg by a safety rope while sharks circle below, Ishmael discovers a figure for all human interdependence — no man stands alone.
Chapter 73
Chapter 73 — Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk
The Pequod hunts a Right Whale for superstitious ballast, while Stubb and Flask swap theories about the mysterious Fedallah and Ahab's bargain with the devil.
Chapter 74
Chapter 74 — The Sperm Whale's Head—Contrasted View
Examining the Sperm Whale's head, Ishmael meditates on eyes placed on opposite sides — and asks whether the whale sees two entirely separate worlds at once.
Chapter 75
Chapter 75 — The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View
The Right Whale's head — all baleen plates and filtering mouth — reads to Ishmael as a Stoic philosopher, purely practical where the Sperm Whale dreamed.
Chapter 76
Chapter 76 — The Battering-Ram
The Sperm Whale's imposing forehead contains not a brain but a vast cushion of oil — nature's perfect battering ram, invulnerable from the front.
Chapter 77
Chapter 77 — The Great Heidelburgh Tun
Inside the Sperm Whale's head lies the Case — a vast natural cistern of liquid spermaceti, purer than any processed oil, ready to be bailed.
Chapter 78
Chapter 78 — Cistern and Buckets
Tashtego falls into the whale's great spermaceti reservoir and begins to drown — until Queequeg dives in and delivers him from the whale's head like a midwife.
Chapter 79
Chapter 79 — The Prairie
The Sperm Whale has no face to read — only an immense, blank brow that defeats physiognomy and returns nothing to the human eye searching it for meaning.
Chapter 80
Chapter 80 — The Nut
Phrenology fails the Sperm Whale: most of that immense brow is oil and bone, not skull — the actual brain is tiny, hidden, and the whale wears a false face before the world.
Chapter 81
Chapter 81 — The Pequod Meets The Virgin
The Pequod races the oil-starved German whaler Jungfrau for the same whale — and Stubb wins a nearly worthless prize: a blind old bull that promptly sinks.
Chapter 82
Chapter 82 — The Honor and Glory of Whaling
Ishmael traces whaling's lineage back to Perseus, Hercules, and St. George — insisting, with mock-scholarly gravity, that every great hero was first a whaleman.
Chapter 83
Chapter 83 — Jonah Historically Regarded
A skeptical Sag-Harbor whaleman doubts the Jonah story on anatomical and logistical grounds — and Ishmael answers each objection with increasingly ridiculous scholarship.
Chapter 84
Chapter 84 — Pitchpoling
Pitchpoling — hurling a long lance like a javelin from a running boat — is the rarest skill in whaling, and Stubb executes it with the precision of an Olympic athlete.
Chapter 85
Chapter 85 — The Fountain
Is the whale's spout water or vapour? Ishmael argues it is mist — and wonders what grand thoughts the whale thinks in the deep between breaths.
Chapter 86
Chapter 86 — The Tail
A lyrical anatomy of the Sperm Whale's tail — its fifty square feet of flukes, its five gestures, its power to destroy boats — and Ishmael's admission that its full meaning eludes him.
Chapter 87
Chapter 87 — The Grand Armada
Chasing a whale armada through Malay pirate straits, Ishmael's boat enters the eye of the school — a scene of nursing mothers and sleeping calves in impossible calm.
Chapter 88
Chapter 88 — Schools and Schoolmasters
Sperm whale society runs on harems ruled by dominant bulls — and old males, expelled in their weakness, wander the seas alone, the most dangerous of all.
Chapter 89
Chapter 89 — Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish
Fast-fish belongs to the harpooner; loose-fish is anyone's prize — and Ishmael extends these two laws to cover colonialism, slavery, and every human property claim ever made.
Chapter 90
Chapter 90 — Heads or Tails
By English law, a whale stranded on the coast belongs to king and queen — and Ishmael tells how Dover fishermen who caught one were legally robbed of every barrel.
Chapter 91
Chapter 91 — The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud
Stubb discovers that a rotting French whale carcass hides a fortune in ambergris — and uses a translator to talk the French crew into cutting it loose, then harvests it himself.
Chapter 92
Chapter 92 — Ambergris
Ambergris — the base of fine perfumes and aristocratic confections — is extracted from the intestines of sick whales, a fact that aristocratic noses have preferred not to know.
Chapter 93
Chapter 93 — The Castaway
Pip leaps overboard in mid-Pacific and is left alone in the open ocean. When recovered hours later, he is not the same person — the infinite sea has broken him open.
Chapter 94
Chapter 94 — A Squeeze of the Hand
Squeezing congealed spermaceti with his crewmates, Ishmael falls into a state of such bliss that he momentarily forgets Moby Dick — and considers squeezing forever.
Chapter 95
Chapter 95 — The Cassock
The mincer who cuts blubber wears a vestment made from the whale's own body — and Ishmael compares him, with precise indirection, to a clergyman at the pulpit.
Chapter 96
Chapter 96 — The Try-Works
At midnight the try-works blaze like a furnace in hell — and Ishmael at the helm, hypnotized by fire, turns himself around and nearly steers the Pequod into the deep.
Chapter 97
Chapter 97 — The Lamp
The whaleman, having made the oil the world burns, sleeps in light — each bunk an Aladdin's lamp — while the merchant sailor stumbles to his berth in darkness.
Chapter 98
Chapter 98 — Stowing Down and Clearing Up
After the blood and fire of the try-works, the Pequod scrubs itself to spotless order — and is ready to hunt again before the smell of oil has cleared the hold.
Chapter 99
Chapter 99 — The Doubloon
Each crew member reads the gold doubloon differently: Ahab sees himself, Starbuck sees God, Stubb sees the zodiac, Pip sees a mirror — the coin reflects every mind that looks at it.
Chapter 100
Chapter 100 — Leg and Arm
The captain of the Samuel Enderby lost an arm to Moby Dick and saw him again afterward — and sailed away, because one arm is enough. Ahab cannot understand this.
The Chase
The Pequod closes on the white whale. Three days. One end.
Chapter 101
Chapter 101 — The Decanter
A tribute to the Enderby house — first into the South Pacific — and to the better food, better drink, and more sociable culture of English whaling ships.
Chapter 102
Chapter 102 — A Bower in the Arsacides
On the Arsacides island of Tranque, Ishmael once measured a whale skeleton that had become an overgrown temple — priests in attendance, vines threading the ribs.
Chapter 103
Chapter 103 — Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton
Ishmael measures the whale's skeleton and translates its bulk into terms a landsman can almost — but not quite — grasp.
Chapter 104
Chapter 104 — The Fossil Whale
Ishmael reaches into geological time, placing the living whale in a lineage of fossil leviathans that predates humanity by millions of years.
Chapter 105
Chapter 105 — Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
Ishmael argues, with geological evidence and oceanic arithmetic, that the whale has grown larger through time and will survive the whale fishery.
Chapter 106
Chapter 106 — Ahab's Leg
The damaged ivory leg reveals a hidden catastrophe: before sailing, Ahab was impaled by his own prosthetic, an injury he concealed and endured alone.
Chapter 107
Chapter 107 — The Carpenter
Ishmael introduces the ship's carpenter: the most practically competent man aboard, a craftsman of infinite versatility and no philosophy whatsoever.
Chapter 108
Chapter 108 — Ahab and the Carpenter
Ahab interrogates the carpenter filing his new leg about the nature of man — a philosophical monologue the pragmatic carpenter receives with complete incomprehension.
Chapter 109
Chapter 109 — Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin
Starbuck faces Ahab in the cabin over a leaking cargo — and for a moment, practical reason wins over monomania before the tide turns again.
Chapter 110
Chapter 110 — Queequeg in His Coffin
Queequeg falls ill, commissions his own coffin, lies in it to test the fit, decides not to die, and recovers — leaving behind the object that will save Ishmael.
Chapter 111
Chapter 111 — The Pacific
The Pequod enters the Pacific and Ishmael greets the great ocean with lyrical wonder, while Ahab stands apart, already scenting the whale.
Chapter 112
Chapter 112 — The Blacksmith
Perth the blacksmith is introduced — a man who lost everything in late life to ruin and took to sea with nothing left to lose.
Chapter 113
Chapter 113 — The Forge
Ahab has Perth forge a special harpoon from razor-stubs, tempered in the blood of the three pagan harpooners, and baptizes it in the devil's name.
Chapter 114
Chapter 114 — The Gilder
A golden calm on the Japanese Sea draws three responses — Ahab's wound, Starbuck's wistfulness, and Stubb's uncomplicated pleasure — from three men watching the same water.
Chapter 115
Chapter 115 — The Pequod Meets The Bachelor
The celebrating Bachelor sails home loaded with oil while the Pequod passes her in silence — Ahab asking only whether the white whale has been seen.
Chapter 116
Chapter 116 — The Dying Whale
Ahab watches a dying whale turn its head toward the sun and addresses it with an unexpected reverence — recognizing in its last motion something he cannot quite name.
Chapter 117
Chapter 117 — The Whale Watch
Ahab spends the night beside his dead whale while the Parsee watches the sharks, and the two exchange cryptic words about the prophecy of Ahab's death.
Chapter 118
Chapter 118 — The Quadrant
Ahab smashes his quadrant on the deck, cursing an instrument that can only tell him where he stands — useless to a man who steers by obsession alone.
Chapter 119
Chapter 119 — The Candles
A typhoon electrifies the Pequod's masts with St. Elmo's fire and Ahab seizes the lightning, addressing the flame as his equal and declaring himself defiant of God.
Chapter 120
Chapter 120 — The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch
In the typhoon's dark, Starbuck urges Ahab to strike the endangered top-sail yard — Ahab orders it lashed still higher, and Starbuck cannot stop him.
Chapter 121
Chapter 121 — Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks
Stubb and Flask, lashing anchors in the storm, trade dark jokes about whether a ship under Ahab should pay extra insurance — and decide the typhoon is too wet to worry about fire.
Chapter 122
Chapter 122 — Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning
Three sentences: Tashtego aloft in the lightning, lashing the top-sail yard, wants rum instead of thunder.
Chapter 123
Chapter 123 — The Musket
Starbuck stands outside Ahab's cabin with a loaded musket and cannot fire — the moment when legitimate moral authority faces charismatic monomania and fails.
Chapter 124
Chapter 124 — The Needle
The typhoon reverses the ship's compass; Ahab improvises a new one from a sail-needle, demonstrating the genuine seamanship that gives his authority its hold on the crew.
Chapter 125
Chapter 125 — The Log and Line
The rotten log-line snaps when heaved — the Pequod is moving faster than any instrument can measure, toward an end no chart has marked.
Chapter 126
Chapter 126 — The Life-Buoy
A sailor drowns when the life-buoy fails; Queequeg's coffin, sealed and waterproofed, is converted into the new one — the instrument of death becomes the means of survival.
Chapter 127
Chapter 127 — The Deck
Ahab watches the carpenter caulk Queequeg's coffin into a life-buoy and cannot resist interrogating the paradox — while Pip follows at his heels.
Chapter 128
Chapter 128 — The Pequod Meets The Rachel
The Rachel has lost a whaleboat with the captain's twelve-year-old son inside — and Ahab refuses to join the search, sailing on to find his whale.
Chapter 129
Chapter 129 — The Cabin
Pip refuses to stay below and clutches Ahab's hand — and Ahab confesses that the boy's broken innocence is the one thing that could still cure him, which is why he cannot allow it.
Chapter 130
Chapter 130 — The Hat
Ahab abandons his cabin for the deck as the ship closes on the whale's ground — until a sea-hawk snatches his hat and carries it into the sea.
Chapter 131
Chapter 131 — The Pequod Meets The Delight
The shattered Delight warns Ahab that Moby Dick has killed her five men and bent her best harpoon — Ahab holds up his blood-forged weapon and sails on.
Chapter 132
Chapter 132 — The Symphony
On a perfect day before the chase, Ahab weeps at the rail and tells Starbuck of the boy he never stopped being — then turns away from the chance to go home.
Chapter 133
Chapter 133 — The Chase—First Day
The white whale appears at last — Ishmael sights him, the boats are lowered, Ahab's harpoon strikes, and Moby Dick destroys Ahab's boat before the day ends.
Chapter 134
Chapter 134 — The Chase—Second Day
The second day finds the whale again — harpoons buried, Ahab's boat smashed again, the Parsee missing — and the prophecy begins to fulfill itself.
Chapter 135
Chapter 135 — The Chase.—Third Day
The third day: Ahab's harpoon flies, the Pequod is rammed and sinks, Ahab is dragged into the sea by his own line — and Ishmael alone floats on Queequeg's coffin.
Chapter 136
Epilogue — The Drama's Done
Ishmael floats on Queequeg's coffin for a day and a night, until the still-searching Rachel picks him up — the sole survivor, returned to land to write the book.