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The ship leaves Nantucket on Christmas Day. Despite fears of Ahab-and the harsh-sounding prophecies of a man named Elijah, who warns Ishmael and Queequeg of the captain-the two men decide to ship out on the Pequod. Ishmael later finds out that Ahab lost his leg to a particularly nasty whale, who bit it off this whale is called Moby Dick, and is famous for its whiteness, its ferocity, and its inability to be caught. There, Ishmael comes across a ship called the Pequod, and when he speaks to two of the boats owners, Peleg and Bildad, he realizes that the captain of the Pequod, called Ahab, is a “strange” man, possibly mad, who does not tend to associate with others. Although Ishmael is initially scared of Queequeg, the two quickly become friends, and vow to accompany each other on a ship of Ishmael’s choosing, in Nantucket. In New Bedford, at the Spouter Inn, Ishmael meets Queequeg, a “native” man from Kokovoko, in the Pacific isles, who is trained as a harpooner on whale-ships-a man who actually hunts and catches whales. The novel begins with a famous line: “Call me Ishmael.” Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, seeks “freedom” from his life in New York City, and decides to head north to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to find a job on a whaling ship.
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