or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. but be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only and all-engrossing object of hunting the white whale. had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! they were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. he was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge.