{"id":"01KFNR86T3EV07FE5T3Y7TMJMH","cid":"bafkreibwhcz7uni3immsv6kbetu7ehdn64sfbtpfxdqsplfghr4fg7swxy","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3096,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.906Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":3062,"text":"put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at\r\nBehring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared\r\neverlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the\r\nflood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea\r\nMastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that\r\nhis very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and\r\nmalicious assaults!\r\n\r\nAnd thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from\r\ntheir ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like\r\nso many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific,\r\nand Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America\r\nadd Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English\r\noverswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun;\r\ntwo thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea\r\nis his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a\r\nright of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges;\r\narmed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though\r\nfollowing the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships,\r\nother fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw\r\ntheir living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone\r\nresides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to\r\nit in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation.\r\n_There_ is his home; _there_ lies his business, which a Noah’s flood\r\nwould not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China.\r\nHe lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among\r\nthe waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years\r\nhe knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells\r\nlike another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman.\r\nWith the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to\r\nsleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight\r\nof land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his\r\nvery pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84DR8FRZ82K80WAC95XM","peer_label":"14","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84DR8FRZ82K80WAC95XM","peer_label":"14","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR86RNWK5JWR9BXMJPRFE4","peer_label":"Chunk 0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.540Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:18.923Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}