{"id":"01KG8AP4H9AT0J6ZFJTNA4JND6","cid":"bafkreiahptbo4zpyjvahi377swm37elkyfxj42eykrvwc35ptxjui2ov5m","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7477,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:49:30.768Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 5","source_file":"01KG89J198KE6FY8WPVJQQRCZ6","start_line":7429,"text":"specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults.\r\nMore than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than\r\nperhaps aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers,\r\nwith every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known\r\nto turn round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their\r\nboats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.\r\n\r\nAlready several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar\r\ndisasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in\r\nthe fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale’s\r\ninfernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death\r\nthat he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an\r\nunintelligent agent.\r\n\r\nJudge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of\r\nhis more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed\r\nboats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the\r\nwhite curds of the whale’s direful wrath into the serene, exasperating\r\nsunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.\r\n\r\nHis three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the\r\neddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had\r\ndashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly\r\nseeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the\r\nwhale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping\r\nhis sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away\r\nAhab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk,\r\nno hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming\r\nmalice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that\r\nalmost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness\r\nagainst the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness\r\nhe at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but\r\nall his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam\r\nbefore him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious\r\nagencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left\r\nliving on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity\r\nwhich has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern\r\nChristians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of\r\nthe east reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and\r\nworship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the\r\nabhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All\r\nthat most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things;\r\nall truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the\r\nbrain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy\r\nAhab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby\r\nDick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general\r\nrage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if\r\nhis chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 5"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AM6RTMZEEVDH17V6YX682","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J198KE6FY8WPVJQQRCZ6","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AP4H9BHE2ZZ0VWKRHA0JA","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AP4H762NTA0V9RNE116P9","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:49:32.713Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:44.945Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}