{"id":"01KJNXJQTP1PTHQCVT9KXXVFPC","cid":"bafkreiakmukezzivfwtxvasxgbwgvuk7r3mutf5tglqxsd2jrgc4nurg3e","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":122071,"char_start":114208,"chunk_index":16,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1966,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the\r\nsin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the\r\ncommand of God—never mind now what that command was, or how\r\nconveyed—which he found a hard command. But all the things that God\r\nwould have us do are hard for us to do—remember that—and hence, he\r\noftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we\r\nmust disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein\r\nthe hardness of obeying God consists.\r\n\r\n“With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at\r\nGod, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men\r\nwill carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the\r\nCaptains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks\r\na ship that’s bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto\r\nunheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no\r\nother city than the modern Cadiz. That’s the opinion of learned men.\r\nAnd where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from\r\nJoppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when\r\nthe Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern\r\nJaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean,\r\nthe Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the\r\nwestward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not\r\nthen, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?\r\nMiserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with\r\nslouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the\r\nshipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So\r\ndisordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen\r\nin those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had\r\nbeen arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he’s a fugitive! no\r\nbaggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,—no friends accompany him\r\nto the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he\r\nfinds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as\r\nhe steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for\r\nthe moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger’s\r\nevil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and\r\nconfidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the\r\nman assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but\r\nstill serious way, one whispers to the other—“Jack, he’s robbed a\r\nwidow;” or, “Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist;” or, “Harry lad, I\r\nguess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike,\r\none of the missing murderers from Sodom.” Another runs to read the bill\r\nthat’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is\r\nmoored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a\r\nparricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and\r\nlooks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now\r\ncrowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah\r\ntrembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so\r\nmuch the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that\r\nitself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the\r\nsailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him\r\npass, and he descends into the cabin.\r\n\r\n“‘Who’s there?’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making\r\nout his papers for the Customs—‘Who’s there?’ Oh! how that harmless\r\nquestion mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again.\r\nBut he rallies. ‘I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon\r\nsail ye, sir?’ Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah,\r\nthough the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that\r\nhollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. ‘We sail with the\r\nnext coming tide,’ at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing\r\nhim. ‘No sooner, sir?’—‘Soon enough for any honest man that goes a\r\npassenger.’ Ha! Jonah, that’s another stab. But he swiftly calls away\r\nthe Captain from that scent. ‘I’ll sail with ye,’—he says,—‘the passage\r\nmoney how much is that?—I’ll pay now.’ For it is particularly written,\r\nshipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history,\r\n‘that he paid the fare thereof’ ere the craft did sail. And taken with\r\nthe context, this is full of meaning.\r\n\r\n“Now Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects\r\ncrime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In\r\nthis world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and\r\nwithout a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all\r\nfrontiers. So Jonah’s Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah’s\r\npurse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum;\r\nand it’s assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive;\r\nbut at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with\r\ngold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions\r\nstill molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit.\r\nNot a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his\r\npassage. ‘Point out my state-room, Sir,’ says Jonah now, ‘I’m\r\ntravel-weary; I need sleep.’ ‘Thou lookest like it,’ says the Captain,\r\n‘there’s thy room.’ Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock\r\ncontains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain\r\nlaughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of\r\nconvicts’ cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed\r\nand dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the\r\nlittle state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is\r\nclose, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too,\r\nbeneath the ship’s water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment\r\nof that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of\r\nhis bowels’ wards.\r\n\r\n“Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly\r\noscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the\r\nwharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and\r\nall, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity\r\nwith reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight\r\nitself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it\r\nhung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his\r\ntormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful\r\nfugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that\r\ncontradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the\r\nceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in\r\nme!’ he groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my\r\nsoul are all in crookedness!’\r\n\r\n“Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still\r\nreeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the\r\nRoman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him;\r\nas one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy\r\nanguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at\r\nlast amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as\r\nover the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and\r\nthere’s naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth,\r\nJonah’s prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.\r\n\r\n“And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and\r\nfrom the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening,\r\nglides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded\r\nsmugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not\r\nbear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to\r\nbreak."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKYRK5Z1J8111JY68868T","peer_label":"jonah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3M1SQXEJCFT6E584EC3","peer_label":"amittai","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3KMC3YWBRZ51N8GQRWF","peer_label":"joppa","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"city","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3P3SK8E6V44EG6FYWM3","peer_label":"cadiz","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"city","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3RZM6Z8NNW2JP8QY3TR","peer_label":"god","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"deity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3S3KJGQAVYVETKD6803","peer_label":"mediterranean sea","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"sea","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM4ABQHDNRR9K67QJS45J","peer_label":"atlantic ocean","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ocean","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM4CFWN77ZF6TPQHJXGGA","peer_label":"straits of gibraltar","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographic_feature","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM4CBR4T6YC91JDHZ9FDK","peer_label":"tarshish ship","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"vessel","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM4DTFDAR7T4D8S03YZFN","peer_label":"captain tarshish ship","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM4FYQKYRYP6GS2H766HD","peer_label":"sin of disobedience jonah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM540TYXQ9HPQY472APSY","peer_label":"dreadful storm","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"event","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM588ZTZY124Y9Y6JQWET","peer_label":"whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"creature","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM48NJYP2KF7XGBBNQ3EX","peer_label":"spain","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"country","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3Q5VPNEPN3G97WEHKBD","peer_label":"tarshish","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"city","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM55NT6WBV3KPT1QQ592C","peer_label":"syrian coast","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:05.847Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.606Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:02:07.429Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}