{"id":"01KF7FPTGVB755YNWD925HD5DD","cid":"bafkreictrq7n2vhhfxeitb3vmobnbr52omm7zfrmm6ogbgdofi4ttpovty","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":19988,"extracted_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:21.454Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 7","source_file":"01KESYVB66H8YEVTN88DWE9W8D","start_line":19918,"text":"cowardly—quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip the\r\ncoward?”\r\n\r\n“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens!\r\nlook down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned\r\nhim, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s\r\nhome henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy;\r\nthou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let’s\r\ndown.”\r\n\r\n“What’s this? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s\r\nhand, and feeling it. “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing\r\nas this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a\r\nman-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth\r\nnow come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the\r\nwhite, for I will not let this go.”\r\n\r\n“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse\r\nhorrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in\r\ngods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods\r\noblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not\r\nwhat he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come!\r\nI feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an\r\nEmperor’s!”\r\n\r\n“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One daft with\r\nstrength, the other daft with weakness. But here’s the end of the\r\nrotten line—all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a\r\nnew line altogether. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.\r\n\r\nSteering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, and her progress\r\nsolely determined by Ahab’s level log and line; the Pequod held on her\r\npath towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such\r\nunfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways\r\nimpelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all\r\nthese seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and\r\ndesperate scene.\r\n\r\nAt last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the\r\nEquatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before\r\nthe dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch—then\r\nheaded by Flask—was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and\r\nunearthly—like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod’s\r\nmurdered Innocents—that one and all, they started from their reveries,\r\nand for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all\r\ntransfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild\r\ncry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the\r\ncrew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers\r\nremained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman—the oldest mariner of\r\nall—declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the\r\nvoices of newly drowned men in the sea.\r\n\r\nBelow in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when he\r\ncame to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not\r\nunaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus\r\nexplained the wonder.\r\n\r\nThose rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great\r\nnumbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or\r\nsome dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and\r\nkept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of\r\nwail. But this only the more affected some of them, because most\r\nmariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not\r\nonly from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the\r\nhuman look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen\r\npeeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain\r\ncircumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 7"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KF7FPNZVQN0MWH12S4195JDT","peer_label":"Chapter 124","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KF7FPNZVQN0MWH12S4195JDT","peer_label":"Chapter 124","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"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"},{"peer":"01KF7FPTBR0AESEEW3E5RAQJYD","peer_label":"Chunk 8","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KF7FPTF503QJR3G72XZBCNYF","peer_label":"Chunk 6","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:21.957Z","ts":"2026-01-18T02:42:28.882Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KF7FCDA7SCSJ6A30TDPDSJQV"}}