{"id":"01KG8AP5XY5WXY0YS4VV2ZGW9D","cid":"bafkreibsc6r2ikari5zn3xor6eaqo2pz6icy77ji5wfxs5fyhuzxxtiv5a","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":14000,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:49:30.771Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 5","source_file":"01KG89J198KE6FY8WPVJQQRCZ6","start_line":13955,"text":"immense. We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we\r\nourselves stand up under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how\r\nvast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two\r\nhundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty\r\natmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty\r\nline-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on\r\nboard.\r\n\r\nAs the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down\r\ninto its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any\r\nsort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths;\r\nwhat landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and\r\nplacidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in\r\nagony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows.\r\nSeems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan\r\nwas suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and\r\nto what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was\r\nonce so triumphantly said—“Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons?\r\nor his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him\r\ncannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron\r\nas straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble;\r\nhe laugheth at the shaking of a spear!” This the creature? this he? Oh!\r\nthat unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with the strength of\r\na thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the\r\nmountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod’s fish-spears!\r\n\r\nIn that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats\r\nsent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad\r\nenough to shade half Xerxes’ army. Who can tell how appalling to the\r\nwounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!\r\n\r\n“Stand by, men; he stirs,” cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly\r\nvibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by\r\nmagnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every\r\noarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in great part\r\nfrom the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce\r\nupwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are\r\nscared from it into the sea.\r\n\r\n“Haul in! Haul in!” cried Starbuck again; “he’s rising.”\r\n\r\nThe lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand’s breadth\r\ncould have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all\r\ndripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two\r\nship’s lengths of the hunters.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 5"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AM941CJW7PJZQ3TCBVZ3M","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J198KE6FY8WPVJQQRCZ6","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AP5XYZWYN8JAXSEWMQD41","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AP5XVKRZ79CNTEK9J5XRV","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:49:34.142Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:51.539Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}