 last taken up and safely landed on board. Ere the squall came close to,
the other boats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in good
time. The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light
upon some token of our perishing, - an oar or a lance pole.
 

                                  Chapter XLIX

                                   The Hyena

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call
life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the
wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at
nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems
worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and
persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an
ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for
small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life
and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits,
and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old
joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in
some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness,
so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now
seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of
whaling to breed this free-and-easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and
with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White
Whale its object.
    »Queequeg,« said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and
I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water; »Queequeg, my
fine friend, does this sort of thing often happen?« Without much emotion, though
soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand that such things did often
happen.
    »Mr. Stubb,« said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his
oil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; »Mr. Stubb, I think I
have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr.
Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then, that going
plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a
