{"id":"01KFNR870W7X7544AVHSRYVEP8","cid":"bafkreig2n757rsw43udcmfyj322rzup3g2npon2n7eaysmxyx74d4c6opq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3495,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.913Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":3455,"text":"Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other\r\nshares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd\r\nof old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards;\r\neach owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a\r\nnail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in\r\nwhaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state\r\nstocks bringing in good interest.\r\n\r\nNow, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a\r\nQuaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to\r\nthis day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the\r\npeculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by\r\nthings altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same\r\nQuakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They\r\nare fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.\r\n\r\nSo that there are instances among them of men, who, named with\r\nScripture names—a singularly common fashion on the island—and in\r\nchildhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the\r\nQuaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless\r\nadventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these\r\nunoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not\r\nunworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when\r\nthese things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a\r\nglobular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and\r\nseclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and\r\nbeneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think\r\nuntraditionally and independently; receiving all nature’s sweet or\r\nsavage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding\r\nbreast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental\r\nadvantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language—that man makes\r\none in a whole nation’s census—a mighty pageant creature, formed for\r\nnoble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically\r\nregarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems\r\na half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For\r\nall men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be\r\nsure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.\r\nBut, as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite another;\r\nand still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from\r\nanother phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR847Z5PK5KBJXR1EFBJCD","peer_label":"16","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR847Z5PK5KBJXR1EFBJCD","peer_label":"16","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":"01KFNR871CZ4WJ7BAXFQGF3G9M","peer_label":"Chunk 5","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KFNR8709RC20NNZP27Q35S71","peer_label":"Chunk 3","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.567Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:14.977Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}