{"id":"01KJNXJQZACF6BWV4ZWGMZWMD9","cid":"bafkreiakbjuroyilfsadfnyfq7u6u3ntdipntkocrrktxxmnuwl466ljdm","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":526982,"char_start":519179,"chunk_index":73,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1951,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin\r\nto chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable\r\nexcitement in the forecastle.\r\n\r\nBut be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate\r\nphantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were\r\nsomehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a\r\nmuffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like\r\nthis, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be\r\nlinked with Ahab’s peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort\r\nof a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even\r\nauthority over him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustain an\r\nindifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as\r\ncivilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their\r\ndreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide\r\namong the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles\r\nto the east of the continent—those insulated, immemorial, unalterable\r\ncountries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the\r\nghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations, when the memory\r\nof the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his\r\ndescendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real\r\nphantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and\r\nto what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed\r\nconsorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the\r\nuncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.\r\n\r\nDays, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly\r\nswept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off\r\nthe Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of\r\nthe Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery\r\nlocality, southerly from St. Helena.\r\n\r\nIt was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and\r\nmoonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;\r\nand, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery\r\nsilence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen\r\nfar in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it\r\nlooked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from\r\nthe sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight\r\nnights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a\r\nlook-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet,\r\nthough herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a\r\nhundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what\r\nemotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at\r\nsuch unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But\r\nwhen, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive\r\nnights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence,\r\nhis unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet,\r\nevery reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit\r\nhad lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. “There she\r\nblows!” Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered\r\nmore; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was\r\na most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously\r\nexciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a\r\nlowering.\r\n\r\nWalking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the\r\nt’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The\r\nbest man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head\r\nmanned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange,\r\nupheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows\r\nof so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air\r\nbeneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic\r\ninfluences were struggling in her—one to mount direct to heaven, the\r\nother to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched\r\nAhab’s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two\r\ndifferent things were warring. While his one live leg made lively\r\nechoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a\r\ncoffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship\r\nso swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager\r\nglances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every\r\nsailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.\r\n\r\nThis midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days\r\nafter, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it\r\nwas descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it\r\ndisappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after\r\nnight, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted\r\ninto the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be;\r\ndisappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and\r\nsomehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still\r\nfurther and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever\r\nalluring us on.\r\n\r\nNor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance\r\nwith the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested\r\nthe Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that\r\nwhenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however\r\nfar apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by\r\none self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there\r\nreigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as\r\nif it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the\r\nmonster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest\r\nand most savage seas.\r\n\r\nThese temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a\r\nwondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in\r\nwhich, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a\r\ndevilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so\r\nwearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful\r\nerrand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.\r\n\r\nBut, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began\r\nhowling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas\r\nthat are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the\r\nblast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of\r\nsilver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this\r\ndesolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more\r\ndismal than before.\r\n\r\nClose to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither\r\nbefore us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And\r\nevery morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and\r\nspite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,\r\nas though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a\r\nthing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for\r\ntheir homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved\r\nthe black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great\r\nmundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering\r\nit had bred.\r\n\r\nCape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called\r\nof yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had\r\nattended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where\r\nguilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed\r\ncondemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat\r\nthat black air without any horizon."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.754Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.754Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}