{"id":"01KJNXJV7WTHM4JBD92S5V35JD","cid":"bafkreiebbdalqy2eq7vqralolu2mpy45jpdwz2orpt5md6k6wtbqai3wbq","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":937612,"char_start":929688,"chunk_index":131,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1981,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil\r\nthemselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them—one\r\nman in each pot, side by side—many confidential communications are\r\ncarried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound\r\nmathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod,\r\nwith the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first\r\nindirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies\r\ngliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from\r\nany point in precisely the same time.\r\n\r\nRemoving the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare\r\nmasonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of\r\nthe furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted\r\nwith heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented\r\nfrom communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir\r\nextending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel\r\ninserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with water as\r\nfast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open direct\r\nfrom the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.\r\n\r\nIt was about nine o’clock at night that the Pequod’s try-works were\r\nfirst started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee\r\nthe business.\r\n\r\n“All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the\r\nworks.” This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting\r\nhis shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said\r\nthat in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed\r\nfor a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of\r\nquick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out,\r\nthe crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still\r\ncontains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed\r\nthe flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming\r\nmisanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by\r\nhis own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is\r\nhorrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you\r\nmust live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor\r\nabout it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells\r\nlike the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the\r\npit.\r\n\r\nBy midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the\r\ncarcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean\r\ndarkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce\r\nflames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and\r\nilluminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek\r\nfire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to\r\nsome vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the\r\nbold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad\r\nsheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and\r\nfolded them in conflagrations.\r\n\r\nThe hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide\r\nhearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of\r\nthe pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge\r\npronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding\r\npots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted,\r\ncurling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled\r\naway in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of\r\nthe boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces.\r\nOpposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden\r\nhearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the\r\nwatch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the\r\nfire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny\r\nfeatures, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards,\r\nand the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were\r\nstrangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they\r\nnarrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror\r\ntold in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards\r\nout of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their\r\nfront, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged\r\nforks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the\r\nship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further\r\nand further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully\r\nchamped the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on\r\nall sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden\r\nwith fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of\r\ndarkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s\r\nsoul.\r\n\r\nSo seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently\r\nguided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that\r\ninterval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the\r\nmadness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend\r\nshapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at\r\nlast begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to\r\nthat unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a\r\nmidnight helm.\r\n\r\nBut that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)\r\nthing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was\r\nhorribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller\r\nsmote my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of\r\nsails, just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were\r\nopen; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and\r\nmechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all\r\nthis, I could see no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed\r\nbut a minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle\r\nlamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and\r\nthen made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression,\r\nthat whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to\r\nany haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered\r\nfeeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the\r\ntiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in\r\nsome enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter with me?\r\nthought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was\r\nfronting the ship’s stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In\r\nan instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying\r\nup into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how\r\ngrateful the relief from this unnatural hallucination of the night, and\r\nthe fatal contingency of being brought by the lee!\r\n\r\nLook not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy\r\nhand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first\r\nhint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its\r\nredness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun,\r\nthe skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking\r\nflames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the\r\nglorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!\r\n\r\nNevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nor Rome’s\r\naccursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of\r\ndeserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,\r\nwhich is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this\r\nearth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow\r\nin him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped. With\r\nbooks the same."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKSZYY4PZZGTPZ89W34AF","peer_label":"narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:16.516Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:16.516Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:16.516Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMTEBAWT8DPF1B1JP4Y41","peer_label":"blubber","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"animal_product","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:16.516Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKZBGV5QSFPD19S2BQF68","peer_label":"captain 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