{"id":"01KFNR88E7NX1B4SBKH2PNBTM4","cid":"bafkreighg5oihtrpzir6t4oocbocmeqwetofggqz3ev55xy2v7anl3rdai","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8713,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.431Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":8640,"text":"CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.\r\n\r\nIt was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging\r\nabout the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters.\r\nQueequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,\r\nfor an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet\r\nsomehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie\r\nlurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own\r\ninvisible self.\r\n\r\nI was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I\r\nkept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the\r\nlong yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as\r\nQueequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword\r\nbetween the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly\r\nand unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess\r\ndid there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only\r\nbroken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as\r\nif this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically\r\nweaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of\r\nthe warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging\r\nvibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise\r\ninterblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed\r\nnecessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle\r\nand weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,\r\nQueequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof\r\nslantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;\r\nand by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding\r\ncontrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s\r\nsword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and\r\nwoof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free\r\nwill, and necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working\r\ntogether. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its\r\nultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending\r\nto that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;\r\nand chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of\r\nnecessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though\r\nthus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the\r\nlast featuring blow at events.\r\n\r\nThus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so\r\nstrange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of\r\nfree will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds\r\nwhence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees\r\nwas that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly\r\nforward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden\r\nintervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that\r\nvery moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of\r\nwhalemen’s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those\r\nlungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous\r\ncadence as from Tashtego the Indian’s.\r\n\r\nAs he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and\r\neagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some\r\nprophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries\r\nannouncing their coming.\r\n\r\n“There she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!”\r\n\r\n“Where-away?”\r\n\r\n“On the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!”\r\n\r\nInstantly all was commotion.\r\n\r\nThe Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and\r\nreliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from\r\nother tribes of his genus.\r\n\r\n“There go flukes!” was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales\r\ndisappeared.\r\n\r\n“Quick, steward!” cried Ahab. “Time! time!”\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84DY7A00KM64H82RP7V2","peer_label":"47","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84DY7A00KM64H82RP7V2","peer_label":"47","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":"01KFNR88DHN9AW2TQ494Y1PDJC","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.900Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:16.468Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}