{"id":"01KJNXJV7WZVG991CQFFE7CVS5","cid":"bafkreid376dylr5ytuyifxil6z6tzsopqqls4b2jqh5aarcac7z7bivav4","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":923257,"char_start":915263,"chunk_index":129,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1999,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip’s\r\nebon head showed like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when\r\nhe fell so rapidly astern. Stubb’s inexorable back was turned upon him;\r\nand the whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless\r\nocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor\r\nPip turned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely\r\ncastaway, though the loftiest and the brightest.\r\n\r\nNow, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the\r\npractised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful\r\nlonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the\r\nmiddle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark,\r\nhow when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea—mark how closely\r\nthey hug their ship and only coast along her sides.\r\n\r\nBut had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No;\r\nhe did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake,\r\nand he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip\r\nvery quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations\r\ntowards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always\r\nmanifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances\r\nnot unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so\r\ncalled, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to\r\nmilitary navies and armies.\r\n\r\nBut it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly\r\nspying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and\r\nStubb’s boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent\r\nupon his fish, that Pip’s ringed horizon began to expand around him\r\nmiserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;\r\nbut from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such,\r\nat least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body\r\nup, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though.\r\nRather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of\r\nthe unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;\r\nand the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the\r\njoyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,\r\nGod-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters\r\nheaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the\r\nloom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So\r\nman’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason,\r\nman comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is\r\nabsurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,\r\nindifferent as his God.\r\n\r\nFor the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that\r\nfishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what\r\nlike abandonment befell myself.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.\r\n\r\nThat whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the\r\nPequod’s side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations\r\npreviously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of\r\nthe Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.\r\n\r\nWhile some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in\r\ndragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and\r\nwhen the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated\r\nere going to the try-works, of which anon.\r\n\r\nIt had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with\r\nseveral others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I\r\nfound it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about\r\nin the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back\r\ninto fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this\r\nsperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener!\r\nsuch a softener! such a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it\r\nfor only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it\r\nwere, to serpentine and spiralise.\r\n\r\nAs I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter\r\nexertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under\r\nindolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands\r\namong those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost\r\nwithin the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all\r\ntheir opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that\r\nuncontaminated aroma,—literally and truly, like the smell of spring\r\nviolets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky\r\nmeadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible\r\nsperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit\r\nthe old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in\r\nallaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely\r\nfree from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort\r\nwhatsoever.\r\n\r\nSqueeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm\r\ntill I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a\r\nstrange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly\r\nsqueezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the\r\ngentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving\r\nfeeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually\r\nsqueezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as\r\nmuch as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish\r\nany social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come;\r\nlet us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into\r\neach other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and\r\nsperm of kindness.\r\n\r\nWould that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since\r\nby many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all\r\ncases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of\r\nattainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the\r\nfancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the\r\nfireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready\r\nto squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I\r\nsaw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of\r\nspermaceti.\r\n\r\nNow, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things\r\nakin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the\r\ntry-works.\r\n\r\nFirst comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering\r\npart of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It\r\nis tough with congealed tendons—a wad of muscle—but still contains some\r\noil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut\r\ninto portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like\r\nblocks of Berkshire marble.\r\n\r\nPlum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the\r\nwhale’s flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and\r\noften participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is\r\na most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name\r\nimports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked\r\nsnowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and\r\npurple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason,\r\nit is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I\r\nstole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should\r\nconceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have\r\ntasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the\r\nvenison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an\r\nunusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.\r\n\r\nThere is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in\r\nthe course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling\r\nadequately to describe."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXM37BGJ4EBHZ5Q1YQPREQ","peer_label":"pip","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMT91P25KJAHA0G0ZMJ0R","peer_label":"whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"animal","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3RZM6Z8NNW2JP8QY3TR","peer_label":"god","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"deity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKSZYY4PZZGTPZ89W34AF","peer_label":"narrator","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFPAB9KDJTFDRQ70X2J0","peer_label":"fishery","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"industry","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXR8D2GQAXTASQRNSREBKQ","peer_label":"louis le gros","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFP9V5HX7QFQRVZ5X066","peer_label":"ocean","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographic_feature","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFP6G0W1NCFAW00JVN07","peer_label":"coral insects","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"organism","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXP2ZSSCP3DDM9XGWM2XJ5","peer_label":"heidelburgh tun","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"container","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ0KNDRH81358DZ3RN40C","peer_label":"try-works","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ2AWN9CNHHF398QBZ1RC","peer_label":"chapter 94 a squeeze of the hand","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"document_section","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFN5HSFWC4VG0GDVDZYY","peer_label":"miser-merman wisdom","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"personification","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ34MGCBVYTHJW7AMFCKN","peer_label":"white-horse","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_product","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ4Z8XWY8QES8H5HH8D47","peer_label":"paracelsan superstition","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"belief_system","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXP756FTW6ASMG62X3CYC9","peer_label":"sperm whale product","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_product","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXRHZXEQ52JXP2SJP3CV7W","peer_label":"mincer","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ35TBMS7AR4ZXGKQNCZG","peer_label":"constantines bath","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"container","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ7E40ATVKDXRVRT979MH","peer_label":"plum-pudding whale product","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_product","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:12.749Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.100Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:14.060Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}