Queequeg's god, a little black idol named Yojo, told him that I must choose our ship. I chose the Pequod, an old ship of Nantucket, her decks worn and wrinkled, her whole body decorated with the teeth and bones of whales. Her owners, two old Quakers named Peleg and Bildad, signed us on for a long voyage. Her captain, they said, was Ahab, a grand, ungodly, godlike man, who had lost his leg to a whale on his last voyage. He has been sick since then, said Peleg, but he will be well again soon enough. We sailed on a cold Christmas Day, and for days no one saw the captain. Then one grey morning I looked up and saw him standing on the quarter-deck. He stood on a leg made from the polished bone of a sperm whale's jaw, with his other foot fixed in a hole bored in the planks, and he looked straight ahead into the sea.