"But those chaps there are worse yet- they are your white squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! [...] Oh! thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear!"
Musing: The fight scene between the sailors ends with poor Pip running scared from all things white - the men, the whale, God. I don't think Melville places these scenes of racial tension in the book for nothing. It's interesting that the reader becomes attached to Pip before Ahab does. I fell in love with Pip from the start, as Ahab himself will. But there is something in the idea that Ahab has love in his heart and that love is not for a character with power or position.