{"id":"01KG8AMH6KK3CZCRN3CCMNN15N","cid":"bafkreidjlfveeu5zxvn4ed76b34mviqr7zmheivyhotjiapnvzgo23hdhi","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":10432,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","start_line":10364,"text":"hour, according to a Rabbinical tradition, pushed after the ark of old\r\nNoah.\r\n\r\nIt was a misty, cloudy night; and though at first our look-outs kept\r\nthe chase in dim sight, yet at last so thick became the atmosphere,\r\nthat no sign of a strange spar was to be seen. But the worst of it was\r\nthat, when last discerned, the Frenchman was broad on our weather-bow,\r\nand the Englishman gallantly leading his van.\r\n\r\nThe breeze blew fresher and fresher; but, with even our main-royal set,\r\nwe dashed along through a cream-coloured ocean of illuminated foam.\r\nWhite-Jacket was then in the top; and it was glorious to look down and\r\nsee our black hull butting the white sea with its broad bows like a\r\nram.\r\n\r\n“We must beat them with such a breeze, dear Jack,” said I to our noble\r\nCaptain of the Top.\r\n\r\n“But the same breeze blows for John Bull, remember,” replied Jack, who,\r\nbeing a Briton, perhaps favoured the Englishman more than the\r\nNeversink.\r\n\r\n“But how we boom through the billows!” cried Jack, gazing over the\r\ntop-rail; then, flinging forth his arm, recited,\r\n\r\n  “‘Aslope, and gliding on the leeward side,\r\n    The bounding vessel cuts the roaring tide.’\r\n\r\n\r\nCamoens! White-Jacket, Camoens! Did you ever read him? The Lusiad, I\r\nmean? It’s the man-of-war epic of the world, my lad. Give me Gama for a\r\nCommodore, say I—Noble Gama! And Mickle, White-Jacket, did you ever\r\nread of him? William Julius Mickle? Camoens’s Translator? A\r\ndisappointed man though, White-Jacket. Besides his version of the\r\nLusiad, he wrote many forgotten things. Did you ever see his ballad of\r\nCumnor Hall?—No?—Why, it gave Sir Walter Scott the hint of Kenilworth.\r\nMy father knew Mickle when he went to sea on board the old Romney\r\nman-of-war. How many great men have been sailors, White-Jacket! They\r\nsay Homer himself was once a tar, even as his hero, Ulysses, was both a\r\nsailor and a shipwright. I’ll swear Shakspeare was once a captain of\r\nthe forecastle. Do you mind the first scene in _The Tempest_,\r\nWhite-Jacket? And the world-finder, Christopher Columbus, was a sailor!\r\nand so was Camoens, who went to sea with Gama, else we had never had\r\nthe Lusiad, White-Jacket. Yes, I’ve sailed over the very track that\r\nCamoens sailed—round the East Cape into the Indian Ocean. I’ve been in\r\nDon Jose’s garden, too, in Macao, and bathed my feet in the blessed dew\r\nof the walks where Camoens wandered before me. Yes, White-Jacket, and I\r\nhave seen and sat in the cave at the end of the flowery, winding way,\r\nwhere Camoens, according to tradition, composed certain parts of his\r\nLusiad. Ay, Camoens was a sailor once! Then, there’s Falconer, whose\r\n‘Ship-wreck’ will never founder, though he himself, poor fellow, was\r\nlost at sea in the Aurora frigate. Old Noah was the first sailor. And\r\nSt. Paul, too, knew how to box the compass, my lad! mind you that\r\nchapter in Acts? I couldn’t spin the yarn better myself. Were you ever\r\nin Malta? They called it Melita in the Apostle’s day. I have been in\r\nPaul’s cave there, White-Jacket. They say a piece of it is good for a\r\ncharm against shipwreck; but I never tried it. There’s Shelley, he was\r\nquite a sailor. Shelley—poor lad! a Percy, too—but they ought to have\r\nlet him sleep in his sailor’s grave—he was drowned in the\r\nMediterranean, you know, near Leghorn—and not burn his body, as they\r\ndid, as if he had been a bloody Turk. But many people thought him so,\r\nWhite-Jacket, because he didn’t go to mass, and because he wrote Queen\r\nMab. Trelawney was by at the burning; and he was an ocean-rover, too!\r\nAy, and Byron helped put a piece of a keel on the fire; for it was made\r\nof bits of a wreck, they say; one wreck burning another! And was not\r\nByron a sailor? an amateur forecastle-man, White-Jacket, so he was;\r\nelse how bid the ocean heave and fall in that grand, majestic way? I\r\nsay, White-Jacket, d’ye mind me? there never was a very great man yet\r\nwho spent all his life inland. A snuff of the sea, my boy, is\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJTJSDBMD7ZEK1X031X87","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J19NC56FFGBCM2SWEZZY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMH6KFHSQA80QMAVAAQ14","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AMH6KF93ZHBC4B7MSP0ZF","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:40.147Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:51.561Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}