elijah! thought i, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. but we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as i did so, who should be seen but elijah following us, though at a distance. somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that i said nothing to queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. he did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent i could not for the life of me imagine. this circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the pequod; and captain ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the cape horn fit; and the silver calabash; and what captain peleg had said of him, when i left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw tistig; and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things.