{"id":"01KFNR870QKAJ5G5SB6Q9CR5S3","cid":"bafkreiaqxduxyt5didamajz5i6uq74g5kafgmsdqb6jyxhfp5nub2wevru","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1232,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.893Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":1175,"text":"CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.\r\n\r\nEntering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,\r\nlow, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of\r\nthe bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large\r\noilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the\r\nunequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent\r\nstudy and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of\r\nthe neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its\r\npurpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first\r\nyou almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New\r\nEngland hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint\r\nof much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and\r\nespecially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the\r\nentry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however\r\nwild, might not be altogether unwarranted.\r\n\r\nBut what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,\r\nportentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the\r\npicture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a\r\nnameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive\r\na nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,\r\nhalf-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to\r\nit, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what\r\nthat marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas,\r\ndeceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight\r\ngale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a\r\nblasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of\r\nthe icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to\r\nthat one portentous something in the picture’s midst. _That_ once found\r\nout, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint\r\nresemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?\r\n\r\nIn fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own,\r\npartly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with\r\nwhom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner\r\nin a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its\r\nthree dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale,\r\npurposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of\r\nimpaling himself upon the three mast-heads.\r\n\r\nThe opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish\r\narray of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with\r\nglittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots\r\nof human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping\r\nround like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed\r\nmower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal\r\nand savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,\r\nhorrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances\r\nand harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With\r\nthis once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan\r\nSwain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that\r\nharpoon—so like a corkscrew now—was flung in Javan seas, and run away\r\nwith by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The\r\noriginal iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle\r\nsojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last\r\nwas found imbedded in the hump.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR849MRV3B92141XN8VT71","peer_label":"Chapter 3. The Spouter-Inn","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR849MRV3B92141XN8VT71","peer_label":"Chapter 3. The Spouter-Inn","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":"01KFNR86VBST0Y10DCD4N59HXE","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.703Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:14.967Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}