{"id":"01KFNR889SE2CH09A3D5BD98EA","cid":"bafkreicd7k5ulblz2pzzrw6jtan7tdjop4ebulpfgvrrzquitfqj7yyog4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":9756,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.439Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":9694,"text":"\r\nCHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story.\r\n\r\n(_As told at the Golden Inn._)\r\n\r\nThe Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is\r\nmuch like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet\r\nmore travellers than in any other part.\r\n\r\nIt was not very long after speaking the Goney that another\r\nhomeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned\r\nalmost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us\r\nstrong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White\r\nWhale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho’s\r\nstory, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain\r\nwondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of\r\nGod which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter\r\ncircumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may\r\nbe called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never\r\nreached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of\r\nthe story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the\r\nprivate property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of\r\nwhom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of\r\nsecrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and\r\nrevealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could\r\nnot well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did\r\nthis thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full\r\nknowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were\r\nthey governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among\r\nthemselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod’s main-mast.\r\nInterweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as\r\npublicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now\r\nproceed to put on lasting record.\r\n\r\n*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head,\r\nstill used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.\r\n\r\nFor my humor’s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once\r\nnarrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one\r\nsaint’s eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden\r\nInn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were\r\non the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they\r\noccasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.\r\n\r\n“Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about\r\nrehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket,\r\nwas cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days’ sail eastward\r\nfrom the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the\r\nnorthward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according\r\nto daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold\r\nthan common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But\r\nthe captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good\r\nluck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to\r\nquit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous,\r\nthough, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low\r\ndown as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued\r\nher cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy\r\nintervals; but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was\r\nthe leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that\r\nnow taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the\r\nnearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and\r\nrepaired.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR848CJHT30V0G0Y4QYWRF","peer_label":"54","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR848CJHT30V0G0Y4QYWRF","peer_label":"54","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":"01KFNR88DFD4ANM4KXRE1NSEDB","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.887Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:16.508Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}