{"id":"01KJNXJQW6FWK1XRNM45VFFFEF","cid":"bafkreic7fcuyrq5kyrrnwgshxuyxet5histnamgvkhfvc6n7madrnlqlue","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":257207,"char_start":249257,"chunk_index":35,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1988,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"Mr. Starbuck; it’ll spoil. Be careful with the butter—twenty cents the\r\npound it was, and mind ye, if—”\r\n\r\n“Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,—away!” and with that,\r\nPeleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.\r\n\r\nShip and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a\r\nscreaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave\r\nthree heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone\r\nAtlantic.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.\r\n\r\nSome chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded\r\nmariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.\r\n\r\nWhen on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive\r\nbows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her\r\nhelm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon\r\nthe man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous\r\nvoyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another\r\ntempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest\r\nthings are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs;\r\nthis six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only\r\nsay that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that\r\nmiserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give\r\nsuccor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort,\r\nhearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our\r\nmortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s\r\ndirest jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land,\r\nthough it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and\r\nthrough. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,\r\nfights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks\r\nall the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly\r\nrushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!\r\n\r\nKnow ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally\r\nintolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid\r\neffort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the\r\nwildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the\r\ntreacherous, slavish shore?\r\n\r\nBut as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,\r\nindefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite,\r\nthan be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For\r\nworm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the\r\nterrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O\r\nBulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy\r\nocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 24. The Advocate.\r\n\r\nAs Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling;\r\nand as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among\r\nlandsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I\r\nam all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby\r\ndone to us hunters of whales.\r\n\r\nIn the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish\r\nthe fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not\r\naccounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a\r\nstranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society,\r\nit would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were\r\nhe presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation\r\nof the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale\r\nFishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed\r\npre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.\r\n\r\nDoubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us\r\nwhalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a\r\nbutchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we\r\nare surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is\r\ntrue. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been\r\nall Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And\r\nas for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye\r\nshall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally\r\nunknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm\r\nwhale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But\r\neven granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered\r\nslippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable\r\ncarrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to\r\ndrink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much\r\nenhances the popular conceit of the soldier’s profession; let me assure\r\nye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would\r\nquickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale’s vast tail,\r\nfanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the\r\ncomprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and\r\nwonders of God!\r\n\r\nBut, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it\r\nunwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding\r\nadoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn\r\nround the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!\r\n\r\nBut look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of\r\nscales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.\r\n\r\nWhy did the Dutch in De Witt’s time have admirals of their whaling\r\nfleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit\r\nout whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some\r\nscore or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did\r\nBritain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties\r\nupwards of £1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of\r\nAmerica now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world;\r\nsail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen\r\nthousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth,\r\nat the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our\r\nharbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if\r\nthere be not something puissant in whaling?\r\n\r\nBut this is not the half; look again.\r\n\r\nI freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,\r\npoint out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty\r\nyears has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken\r\nin one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way\r\nand another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so\r\ncontinuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may\r\nwell be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves\r\npregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to\r\ncatalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past\r\nthe whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and\r\nleast known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes\r\nwhich had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If\r\nAmerican and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage\r\nharbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the\r\nwhale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted\r\nbetween them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the\r\nheroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I\r\nsay that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket,\r\nthat were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern.\r\nFor in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish\r\nsharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands,\r\nbattled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines\r\nand muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a\r\nflourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the\r\nlife-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKYN45TKMYHSZQ3ZB1G5Q","peer_label":"bulkington","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:19.686Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM0K89EKJARB6VQBC23Q5","peer_label":"peleg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:19.686Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKZ5EM505K7D13HFXVKH7","peer_label":"new 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