Chapter 48 Summary

The harpoon boats are lowered on the waters for the whale hunt. The five men get on the boat with Captain Ahab. Ishmael describes these men as exotic-looking, particularly the sinister Fedallah, who wears his own long hair bunched upon his head like a turban. The crew is startled by the sudden appearance of these men; however, Ishmael recalls how there were several clues about some men being onboard secretively—the strange sounds coming from the hold and Ahab’s frequent visits there. Flask calls his men’s attention to the task at hand. The Pequod’s first lowering after a pod of whales is unsuccessful. Queequeg manages to strike a harpoon on a whale, but the animal overturns the boat. As the squall has cast a mist over the waters, the men in his boat are almost crushed by the ship as it passes looking for them. Finally, they are pulled aboard.

Chapter 49 Summary

Ishmael laughs at the experience of confronting death. He comments on the phenomenon of laughter as a powerful and intuitive reaction to great danger. He has never been on a whaling expedition before, and the more experienced members of the crew apprise him that whaling is more dangerous than the one they just undertook. Ishmael decides to write his will with the help of Queequeg. He takes a pragmatic approach toward his life and arrives at a morbid understanding of himself as a dead man; any further time he will spend on the sea will be a bonus.

Chapter 50 Summary

Ahab decides to have his own harpoon boat with his crew. This is particularly a peculiar decision as captains usually don’t risk themselves in search of whales. In Ahab’s case, this is more applicable as he is missing a leg. Ishmael notes that the owners of the Pequod wouldn’t have approved of Ahab’s decision, and hence the captain resorted to keeping the presence of these men a secret. The crew starts getting accustomed to the strange men but remains wary of the mysterious Fedallah, with Ishmael hinting that there might be something demoniacal about this man.

Chapter 51 Summary

One night, on the masthead, Fedallah announces that he can see a whale spouting. The ship tries to locate the whale, but it cannot be found. Every night then onward, the spouting can be seen. Ishmael calls it a “spirit-spout” as it seems to be a phantom leading them on. Some think it might be Moby Dick leading the ship on toward its destruction. The Pequod sails around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. Ahab keeps a stern vigil during this treacherous passage. The men resign themselves to being “practical fatalists.”

Chapter 52 Summary

The Pequod crosses another ship called the Albatross. As the two ships pass each other, Captain Ahab asks the crew whether they have seen Moby Dick. The captain of the other ship tries to respond, but a gust of wind blows away his speaking trumpet. The Pequod continues its way “around the world,” and Ishmael mulls over how this grand-sounding mission is really nothing but going around in circles.

Chapter 53 Summary

Ishmael explains what a “gam” is—a social meeting between two whaling ships where the captain of the first ship would board the second and the first mate of the second ship would board the first to share information—and why this was not done when the Pequod met the Albatross as Captain Ahab believes that the Albatross has nothing to share about Moby Dick, and he is not interested in anything less than that.

Chapter 54 Summary

This chapter tells the story of a Nantucket whaler called the Town-Ho. Ishmael hears this story from Tashtego. Once on the Town-Ho, a sailor named Steelkit got into an argument with the first mate Radney. This resulted into a mutiny by Steelkit, which was put down by Radney and the mutineers punished. Steelkit then attempted to murder Radney, but before he could do anything, Radney fell overboard while attempting to harpoon Moby Dick and the great whale snapped him up in his jaws. Ishmael declares that this is not a fantastic tale as he had heard the story from Steelkit himself.

Chapters 48–54 Analysis

The chapters in this section are tinged with Gothic horror. We see the appearance of five ghostly figures onboard, especially the mysterious Fedallah, who even among the culturally diverse whaling industry remains an uncomfortable anomaly. Their secretiveness is heightened by their aloofness and connection to Ahab. Throughout the story, the reader finds it difficult to extricate the real from the supernatural, in part because Ahab exploits mystery and superstition for his own motivations.

The frequent sighting of the “spirit-spout” is another Gothic element. It appears that the ghostly presence on board extends to even supernatural occurrences on the sea where a ghost whale, or perhaps the spirit of Moby Dick, seems to be leading on the Pequod. The ghostly appearance of the Albatross adds to the ominous and spectral tone—the ship is rusted, and the crew has been sailing for four years who are now “clad in the skins of beasts.” Even more eerily, the words of the captain of the Albatross are lost to the wind as his speaking trumpet gets blown away. The ship passes the Pequod silently like a ghost whereas the mad Captain Ahab cries out about sailing “[a]round the world.” This brief interaction also highlights how isolated the Pequod is even on the sea. What little contact the crew has with the rest of humanity is brief and barely decipherable. The isolation is compounded by Ahab’s solipsism, where his sole focus is Moby Dick, and he can see nothing else. His refusal to conduct the “gam” underscores both his and the ship’s solitary journey.

The Town-Ho’s story is another digression from the main narrative. It also emphasizes the real danger that Moby Dick represents. It is important to note that Ishmael does not tell the story as it was told to him by the crew of the Town-Ho; he rather tells the story as he told it from the Golden Inn in Spain after his voyage on the Pequod is complete. This informs the reader that Ishmael survived the voyage on the Pequod and is, in fact, telling the story based not in real time but in hindsight.

Ishmael’s musings on his mortality and drawing up his will adds to the morbidity of the narrative. His near-death experience serves as a reminder to the reader about the constant threat of death on the sea. This threat brings Queequeg back into the narrative as the two friends spend some companionable time.