The very doubloon Starbuck once objected to on the quarter-deck now hung nailed to the mast. Sailors passing by often stopped before it to study the figures carved there.
Today, too, a few came up to it one after another. It was the same coin, but what each of them read in it was different.
The One Who Sees Only Himself
Ahab was first to stand before it. He studied the mountain peaks, the flame, and the tower carved into it for a long while.
“The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab.”
In the end, he read nothing in those figures but himself. To him, everything in the world came back around to his own story.
The One Who Reads a Warning
Starbuck came next. Looking at the same peaks, he read something entirely different.
To him, the markings looked like a warning carved by God. He took them as a story about a life that must pass through a shadowed valley.
The One Who Reads a Fortune
Stubb came up laughing and traced the zodiac signs around the coin’s edge with his finger. He unpacked them one by one, likening them to whatever astrology he knew.
His reading came off more as a joke than anything serious. To him, this coin held no heavy meaning, just something to pass the time with.
The One Who Reads a Price
Flask didn’t linger long before it. All he calculated was how much tobacco that coin could buy.
What the figures meant didn’t matter to him at all. The only thing he cared to know was what the coin was worth.
The Boy Who Came Last
Pip, the youngest sailor, was the last to stand before the coin. Without studying it long, he spoke up at once.
“Everybody’s seeing themselves in that coin,” he muttered, without a smile.
The Same Coin, Different Eyes
Ishmael realized that Pip’s one remark had cut straight through everything the four before him had said. Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, in the end all of them had been looking at themselves, not the coin.
Standing before the very same coin, five people saw five different things. The figures were one, but the eyes reading them were five.