{"id":"01KFNR8B9HG20WJZBM8Q4ZYK3X","cid":"bafkreif4mtxpvnn6qrrafhallbxfn7n62caq6cqypj4dhomwcqbojj4ffu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":20727,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:06.415Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":20667,"text":"\r\n“Sir.”\r\n\r\n“Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such\r\na day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a\r\nboy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty\r\nyears of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and\r\nstorm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab\r\nforsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors\r\nof the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not\r\nspent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the\r\ndesolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a\r\nCaptain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any\r\nsympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness!\r\nGuinea-coast slavery of solitary command!—when I think of all this;\r\nonly half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before—and how for forty\r\nyears I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment\r\nof my soil!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily\r\nhand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away,\r\nwhole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and\r\nsailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage\r\npillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I\r\nwidowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the\r\nmadness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with\r\nwhich, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly\r\nchased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years’\r\nfool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase?\r\nwhy weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance?\r\nhow the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not\r\nhard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been\r\nsnatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me,\r\nthat I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some\r\nashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel\r\ndeadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering\r\nbeneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!—crack my\r\nheart!—stave my brain!—mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey\r\nhairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus\r\nintolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a\r\nhuman eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to\r\ngaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is\r\nthe magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no;\r\nstay on board, on board!—lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives\r\nchase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with\r\nthe far away home I see in that eye!”\r\n\r\n“Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!\r\nwhy should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us\r\nfly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are\r\nStarbuck’s—wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow\r\nyouth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,\r\nlonging, paternal old age! Away! let us away!—this instant let me alter\r\nthe course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl\r\non our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some\r\nsuch mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.”\r\n\r\n“They have, they have. I have seen them—some summer days in the\r\nmorning. About this time—yes, it is his noon nap now—the boy\r\nvivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of\r\ncannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back\r\nto dance him again.”\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR85HWN9BZZ5RJPNHTDQTZ","peer_label":"133","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR85HWN9BZZ5RJPNHTDQTZ","peer_label":"133","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":"01KFNR8BAA09WRGCQMVT6XDW11","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:06.952Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:18.920Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}