"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.  

"There is somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck"

There's a mysterious noise. 

"What the White Whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid."

Ishmael talks about all things white. 

"Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing."

We learn of the sailor's lore surrounding Moby Dick and also of how Ahab came to lose his leg and his return to Nantucket. 

"Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy"

The crew starts dancing, drinking, getting horny, and starting a race war.