{"id":"01KF7FPP1K89GKC0WKTMGNRR22","cid":"bafkreidv3yohtm7fl4dopd7btjbsridvxwlwnoif33n6lhdv5tfgwjptla","type":"chapter","properties":{"end_line":18888,"extracted_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:16.572Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chapter 114","source_file":"01KESYVB66H8YEVTN88DWE9W8D","start_line":18828,"text":"CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.\r\n\r\nPenetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising\r\nground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild,\r\npleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on\r\nthe stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or\r\nsailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or\r\nseventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small\r\nsuccess for their pains.\r\n\r\nAt such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow\r\nheaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so\r\nsociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone\r\ncats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy\r\nquietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the\r\nocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and\r\nwould not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a\r\nremorseless fang.\r\n\r\nThese are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a\r\ncertain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he\r\nregards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing\r\nonly the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high\r\nrolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when\r\nthe western emigrants’ horses only show their erected ears, while their\r\nhidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.\r\n\r\nThe long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these\r\nthere steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied\r\nchildren lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when\r\nthe flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most\r\nmystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate,\r\nand form one seamless whole.\r\n\r\nNor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as\r\ntemporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem\r\nto open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath\r\nupon them prove but tarnishing.\r\n\r\nOh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in\r\nye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,—in ye,\r\nmen yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some\r\nfew fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them.\r\nWould to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling\r\nthreads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a\r\nstorm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this\r\nlife; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one\r\npause:—through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless\r\nfaith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then\r\ndisbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But\r\nonce gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and\r\nmen, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor\r\nno more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will\r\nnever weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like\r\nthose orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of\r\nour paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.\r\n\r\nAnd that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into that\r\nsame golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:—\r\n\r\n“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s\r","title":"Chapter 114"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KF7FPKDT5SHSH1ZQV6ABHQCA","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"book","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KF7FPKDT5SHSH1ZQV6ABHQCA","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"book","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KESYJX0Z6XE0HWTS5N3SDG0B","peer_label":"The Classics","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:17.434Z","ts":"2026-01-18T02:42:17.434Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KF7FCDA7SCSJ6A30TDPDSJQV"}}