Tilting at windmills requires a cunning audacity to conceal its absurdity.
DWill and I debated Don Quixote at some length. Melville's allusion to the master is here rather too flagrant compared to Cervantes' own wily skill at concealing his true chivalric hand.the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (for few men's courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than Moby Dick
Ah chivalry! The noble crusades! Such high and pious ideals! And who said whaling was sordid?the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them
So, despite the high monomania, there are whales to be caught, even if only to keep the harpooneers eye in and stop talk of usurpation.chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object—that final and romantic object, too many would have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash—aye, cash.
vigilance was not long without reward.
