{"id":"01KFNR89SDY1A6845GHQDK7XJ2","cid":"bafkreia64cgwkx6hfvimcrftwsyqpi56tfnkkz4g4ddavycslk5qld2544","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":16199,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:04.770Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":16136,"text":"Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the\r\npractised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful\r\nlonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the\r\nmiddle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark,\r\nhow when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea—mark how closely\r\nthey hug their ship and only coast along her sides.\r\n\r\nBut had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No;\r\nhe did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake,\r\nand he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip\r\nvery quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations\r\ntowards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always\r\nmanifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances\r\nnot unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so\r\ncalled, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to\r\nmilitary navies and armies.\r\n\r\nBut it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly\r\nspying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and\r\nStubb’s boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent\r\nupon his fish, that Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him\r\nmiserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;\r\nbut from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such,\r\nat least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body\r\nup, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though.\r\nRather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of\r\nthe unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;\r\nand the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the\r\njoyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,\r\nGod-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters\r\nheaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the\r\nloom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So\r\nman’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason,\r\nman comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is\r\nabsurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,\r\nindifferent as his God.\r\n\r\nFor the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that\r\nfishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what\r\nlike abandonment befell myself.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.\r\n\r\nThat whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the\r\nPequod’s side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations\r\npreviously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of\r\nthe Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.\r\n\r\nWhile some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in\r\ndragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and\r\nwhen the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated\r\nere going to the try-works, of which anon.\r\n\r\nIt had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with\r\nseveral others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I\r\nfound it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about\r\nin the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back\r\ninto fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this\r\nsperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener!\r\nsuch a softener! such a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it\r\nfor only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it\r\nwere, to serpentine and spiralise.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84F9V753K1RB4Z4DYEA9","peer_label":"Ambergris","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84F9V753K1RB4Z4DYEA9","peer_label":"Ambergris","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":"01KFNR8B7SVZHAAH8ERVASGZGE","peer_label":"Chunk 5","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KFNR89QZRXAWBA0FVPET64E4","peer_label":"Chunk 3","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:05.563Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:17.760Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}