now, bildad, like peleg, and indeed many other nantucketers, was a quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. for some of these same quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. they are fighting quakers; they are quakers with a vengeance.