{"id":"01KJNXJQV2KY4Q7K8Z2EEA5A7B","cid":"bafkreidpisgh2bqg4qqq6nhyselxy6dj2w53wk2zsjfmcy2jhn3xnqrfcm","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":164699,"char_start":157034,"chunk_index":22,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1917,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of\r\nsnapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable\r\nof being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing\r\nthe boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the\r\nmidst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and\r\ncrawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured\r\none end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso,\r\ncaught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next\r\njerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was\r\nrun into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern\r\nboat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long\r\nliving arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming\r\nlike a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by\r\nturns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I\r\nlooked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved.\r\nThe greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the\r\nwater, Queequeg, now took an instant’s glance around him, and seeming\r\nto see just how matters were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes\r\nmore, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the other\r\ndragging a lifeless form. The boat soon picked them up. The poor\r\nbumpkin was restored. All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the\r\ncaptain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a\r\nbarnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.\r\n\r\nWas there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he\r\nat all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He\r\nonly asked for water—fresh water—something to wipe the brine off; that\r\ndone, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the\r\nbulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to\r\nhimself—“It’s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We\r\ncannibals must help these Christians.”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 14. Nantucket.\r\n\r\nNothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a\r\nfine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.\r\n\r\nNantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of\r\nthe world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely\r\nthan the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of\r\nsand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than\r\nyou would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some\r\ngamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they\r\ndon’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have\r\nto send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that\r\npieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true\r\ncross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses,\r\nto get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an\r\noasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand\r\nshoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up,\r\nbelted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island\r\nof by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will\r\nsometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these\r\nextravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.\r\n\r\nLook now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was\r\nsettled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle\r\nswooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant\r\nIndian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child\r\nborne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the\r\nsame direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage\r\nthey discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory\r\ncasket,—the poor little Indian’s skeleton.\r\n\r\nWhat wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should\r\ntake to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs\r\nin the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more\r\nexperienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last,\r\nlaunching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world;\r\nput an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at\r\nBehring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared\r\neverlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the\r\nflood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea\r\nMastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that\r\nhis very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and\r\nmalicious assaults!\r\n\r\nAnd thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from\r\ntheir ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like\r\nso many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific,\r\nand Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America\r\nadd Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English\r\noverswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun;\r\ntwo thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea\r\nis his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a\r\nright of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges;\r\narmed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though\r\nfollowing the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships,\r\nother fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw\r\ntheir living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone\r\nresides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to\r\nit in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation.\r\n_There_ is his home; _there_ lies his business, which a Noah’s flood\r\nwould not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China.\r\nHe lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among\r\nthe waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years\r\nhe knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells\r\nlike another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman.\r\nWith the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to\r\nsleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight\r\nof land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his\r\nvery pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 15. Chowder.\r\n\r\nIt was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to\r\nanchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we could attend to no\r\nbusiness that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord\r\nof the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the\r\nTry Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept\r\nhotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that Cousin\r\nHosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he\r\nplainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck\r\nat the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us about keeping a\r\nyellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to\r\nthe larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a\r\ncorner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first\r\nman we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his very\r\nmuch puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg\r\ninsisted that the yellow warehouse—our first point of departure—must be\r\nleft on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say\r\nit was on the 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