"In the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows."

Ishmael tells us about the Gam, a tradition where sailors trade information and chit chat.  

"Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific Ocean!"

The Pequod passes another ship, The Albatross and they attempt to brief conversation but nature seems to have other plans. 

"Beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm."

The crew all witness a whale spout and there's the feeling like nature is personifying and turning against the ship. Probably nothing to worry about. 

"And all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end." 

Ishmael ponders Ahab's phantom crew of whale hunters. 

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."

Ishmael rethinks his voyage on the Pequod and makes Queegqueg the inheritor of his possessions. 

"Devils are good fellows enough."

They hunt the a pod of whales in the middle of a squall, Ahab has a secret whale-boat crew unbeknownst to the rest of The Pequod until now. 

"There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!"

The Pequod spots a whale. 

"To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order."

Ahab walks a fine line between dominion over the ship's crew and chaos. 

"For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it."

Ishmael reviews other times whales have attacked ships. 

"And when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire."

Ahab's got a chart of the seas and is also insane. And also has a demon inside him which doesn't sleep. Definitely the qualities you'd want in your captain.