{"id":"01KJNXJQZASB9TRKCH25KEJK7N","cid":"bafkreid43zchiaf73x2gk67fibiup27ppszp74kblfedyunr6zqwnv3l74","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":548496,"char_start":540574,"chunk_index":76,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1981,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"on a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange\r\nvisits by boats’ crews: the two captains remaining, for the time, on\r\nboard of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other._\r\n\r\nThere is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten\r\nhere. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so\r\nhas the whale fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the\r\ncaptain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern\r\nsheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often\r\nsteers himself with a pretty little milliner’s tiller decorated with\r\ngay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa\r\nof that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times indeed, if\r\nwhaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old\r\naldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never\r\nadmits of any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete\r\nboat’s crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or\r\nharpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the\r\noccasion, and the captain, having no place to sit in, is pulled off to\r\nhis visit all standing like a pine tree. And often you will notice that\r\nbeing conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him\r\nfrom the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to\r\nthe importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor\r\nis this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting\r\nsteering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the\r\nafter-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus\r\ncompletely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself\r\nsideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent\r\npitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of\r\nfoundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a\r\nspread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again,\r\nit would never do in plain sight of the world’s riveted eyes, it would\r\nnever do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying\r\nhimself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his\r\nhands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he\r\ngenerally carries his hands in his trowsers’ pockets; but perhaps being\r\ngenerally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast.\r\nNevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones\r\ntoo, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment\r\nor two, in a sudden squall say—to seize hold of the nearest oarsman’s\r\nhair, and hold on there like grim death.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story.\r\n\r\n(_As told at the Golden Inn._)\r\n\r\nThe Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is\r\nmuch like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet\r\nmore travellers than in any other part.\r\n\r\nIt was not very long after speaking the Goney that another\r\nhomeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned\r\nalmost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us\r\nstrong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White\r\nWhale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho’s\r\nstory, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain\r\nwondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of\r\nGod which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter\r\ncircumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may\r\nbe called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never\r\nreached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of\r\nthe story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the\r\nprivate property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of\r\nwhom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of\r\nsecrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and\r\nrevealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could\r\nnot well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did\r\nthis thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full\r\nknowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were\r\nthey governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among\r\nthemselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod’s main-mast.\r\nInterweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as\r\npublicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now\r\nproceed to put on lasting record.\r\n\r\n*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head,\r\nstill used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.\r\n\r\nFor my humor’s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once\r\nnarrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one\r\nsaint’s eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden\r\nInn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were\r\non the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they\r\noccasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.\r\n\r\n“Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about\r\nrehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket,\r\nwas cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days’ sail eastward\r\nfrom the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the\r\nnorthward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according\r\nto daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold\r\nthan common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But\r\nthe captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good\r\nluck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to\r\nquit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous,\r\nthough, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low\r\ndown as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued\r\nher cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy\r\nintervals; but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was\r\nthe leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that\r\nnow taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the\r\nnearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and\r\nrepaired.\r\n\r\n“Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance\r\nfavoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the\r\nway, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically\r\nrelieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the\r\nship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well\r\nnigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous\r\nbreezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at\r\nher port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been\r\nfor the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the\r\nbitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from\r\nBuffalo.\r\n\r\n“‘Lakeman!—Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?’\r\nsaid Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.\r\n\r\n“On the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but—I crave your\r\ncourtesy—may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now,\r\ngentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as\r\nlarge and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far\r\nManilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet\r\nbeen nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly\r\nconnected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate,\r\nthose grand fresh-water seas of ours,—Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and\r\nSuperior, and Michigan,—possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many\r\nof the ocean’s noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of\r\nraces and of climes."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXMW214XHP4CDWFQDY6DQR","peer_label":"town-ho","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:19.077Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV94RQAJGYF0Y1PBZWSW","peer_label":"tashtego","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:19.077Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM529XJRPQXV0DC58V32N","peer_label":"moby 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