Ahab: My Magnificent Obsession

By W.Wm. Mee

‘Captain Ahab & Moby Dick’ --- two names that instantly conjure up thoughts of history, whaling ships and danger! Also one long, gigantic book that most people have never read --- and the ones that tried probably gave up long before the ‘great white whale’ ever showed up in person.
Well, NOW you can read ‘Ahab’s own version’ of the tale in this short story, ‘Ahab’
(50 pages instead of 500) by W.Wm.Mee. All the adventure, excitement and inner conflict is there waiting for you --- including pictures! So go ahead, tackle Moby Dick again --- and this time you will reach the end!

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.Wm. Mee
• Release date: Oct 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005886301

W.Wm. Mee

Wayne William Mee is a retired English teacher who enjoys hiking, sailing and walking his Beagle hound. He is also a 'living historian' or 'reenactor'. You can see Wayne's historical group on Facebook's 'McCaw's Privateers' 18th Century Naval Camp' page. Building & sailing wooden sailboats also takes up a chunk of Wayne's time, but along with his wife Maggie,son Jason and granddaughter Zoe, writing is his true love, the one he returns to let his imagination soar.Wayne would like you to 'look him up' on FACEBOOK and click the 'Friend' button or even zap him an e-mail.If you enjoyed any of his books, kindly leave a REVIEW here at Smashwords and/or say so on Facebook, Twitter, Tweeter or whatever other 'social network' you use.Thanks for stopping by ---and keep reading!!Drop him a line either there or at [e-mail]'ll be glad to hear from you!'Rest ye gentle --- sleep ye sound'

Book preview

Ahab

‘My Magnificent

Obsession’

by

W.Wm.Mee

As told by the Captain himself

Copyright 2021 W.Wm.Mee

Smashwords Edition

BACKGROUND

Call me Ahab.

Better yet, call me Ahab’s ghost, for that’s what I am.

What’s that ye say? ‘Ye don’t believe in ghosts?

Well, I can’t fault ye for that, mate; I didn’t believe in them myself --- not until I died.

Or rather, not till I drowned and woke up tethered to that god-cursed whale!

Now, just like that pale but bloody leviathan, I wander the earth searching for answers to questions that I don’t fully understand!

It’s my curse --- or our curse really --- the whale and I ---to hate each other, yet to be eternally joined together. Much like a bad union of a man and wife, joined together forever in purgatory by either God or the Devil --- or some dark, inscrutable thing that is somewhere between the two!

How did that writer fellow Melville put it in that wicked book he wrote about me?

‘All visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The ‘white whale; tasks me; he heaps me. (And he still does, even in Death!)

Yet he is but a mask. ‘Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the uncaring, malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung!

Heavy stuff that, especially for a ghost of a sailor like me and a --- whatever you are.

But let’s not sail off on the wrong tack, friend, for anger only leads to a lee shore.

You were asking about my name. It was given me by my mad, widowed mother. What drove her mad was a combination of extreme poverty, prolonged loneliness and rot-gut gin. My father was a whaling man who was drowned in the China Sea when I was but a lad. I’ve long forgotten what his face looked like --- yet my mother’s visage often swims before me.

I’ve heard it said that the name itself comes from the Hebrew aheb meaning ‘beloved’ --- not that I ever felt ‘beloved’ by either of my parents --- the one an always absent father and the other an always mad, drunk whore. More than likely the daft woman named me for the biblical story of Ahab in the Books of Kings --- the evil idol-worshipping ruler. She was always a great one for her religion was my mother. The eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth, and spare the rod and spoil the bloody child kind!

Myself I always found Hell far more attractive than Heaven and Satan the more interesting of the two deities. What’s that? ‘Blasphemy’ you say? Speak not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun itself if it insulted me!

Ishmael --- the narrator that Melville uses to tell ‘my story’, asks Stubbs about the origin of my name. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood? Loyal, steadfast Stubbs rebukes young Ishmael by pointing out that ‘I did not name myself’. In the book Stubbs goes on to sing my praises, though rather darkly.

"He's a grand, ungodly, god-like man, is Captain Ahab! He doesn't speak much; but, when he does, then you’d best listen or hell flay you with his tongue cleaner than a harpooner with a flensing lance! For mark ye and be forewarned, lad; Ahab's above the common man. Up there with the stars be his thoughts, boy --- or perhaps down below with Beelzebub himself! Ahab's been in colleges, as well as among the cannibals; been accustomed to deeper wonders than the waves and fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales!"

In all the years that I knew Stubbs he never spoke me thus --- but then, who of us can clearly see the true heart of any man?

I first took to sea as an apprentice harpooner at the age of four and ten and I’ve roamed the wide world for two score years, seeing such wonders and calamities that would break a mother’s heart and turn s man’s to stone.

When I was younger I had a family for a while; a wife and child; a house overlooking the sea. But I was mostly away --- gone for two or three years at a time, sailing the ‘whale’s road’ around the rim of the world. I’d come home a stranger to be greeted by shy people that I once knew. The last time I returned home it was all gone; the house, the wife and the child --- all taken by fire.

After that there was no reason to go again.

And so the Pequod became my home; its crew my obedient ‘family’ --- and the hunting of whales became not only my business, but my passion. But after ‘the incident’ with the white whale --- after the loss of my leg and the tearing out of my soul, finding the white devil that maimed me inside and out became my magnificent obsession!

But