{"id":"01KJNXJV850057BR0YQFAM0XYM","cid":"bafkreicdlruf7dn267y4w2y2cdy7qhhfn25snav3mp3xzfybd6log6cf6i","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":951603,"char_start":943941,"chunk_index":133,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1916,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from\r\nout the daintiest Holland.\r\n\r\nNow, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and\r\nhumorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;\r\npropose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not\r\nto taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to\r\nsuch musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short\r\nof audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and\r\nbring us napkins!\r\n\r\nBut mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent\r\non spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil\r\nthe old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot\r\nsomewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest\r\nuninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through\r\nfor ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their\r\nwrists with all day rowing on the Line,—they only step to the deck to\r\ncarry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash,\r\nyea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the\r\ncombined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works;\r\nwhen, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves\r\nto cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the\r\ntime the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks,\r\nare startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and away they fly to\r\nfight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my\r\nfriends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we\r\nmortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its\r\nsmall but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed\r\nourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean\r\ntabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when—_There she\r\nblows!_—the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other\r\nworld, and go through young life’s old routine again.\r\n\r\nOh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two\r\nthousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with\r\nthee along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught\r\nthee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.\r\n\r\nEre now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck,\r\ntaking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in\r\nthe multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been\r\nadded how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood,\r\nhe was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely\r\neyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the\r\nbinnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the\r\ncompass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of\r\nhis purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the\r\nmainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted\r\ngold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness, only\r\ndashed with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.\r\n\r\nBut one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly\r\nattracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as\r\nthough now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in\r\nsome monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some\r\ncertain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little\r\nworth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell\r\nby the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass\r\nin the Milky Way.\r\n\r\nNow this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of\r\nthe heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands,\r\nthe head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst\r\nall the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes,\r\nyet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its\r\nQuito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour\r\npassed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with\r\nthick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless\r\nevery sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it\r\nwas set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however\r\nwanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as\r\nthe white whale’s talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary\r\nwatch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he\r\nwould ever live to spend it.\r\n\r\nNow those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun\r\nand tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun’s\r\ndisks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving,\r\nare in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems\r\nalmost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by\r\npassing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.\r\n\r\nIt so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy\r\nexample of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,\r\nREPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country\r\nplanted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and\r\nnamed after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the\r\nunwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the\r\nlikeness of three Andes’ summits; from one a flame; a tower on another;\r\non the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of\r\nthe partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual\r\ncabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at\r\nLibra.\r\n\r\nBefore this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now\r\npausing.\r\n\r\n“There’s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and\r\nall other grand and lofty things; look here,—three peaks as proud as\r\nLucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the\r\ncourageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all\r\nare Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,\r\nwhich, like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but\r\nmirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for\r\nthose who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks\r\nnow this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the\r\nsign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out\r\nof a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born\r\nin throes, ’tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So\r\nbe it, then! Here’s stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.”\r\n\r\n“No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must\r\nhave left their mouldings there since yesterday,” murmured Starbuck to\r\nhimself, leaning against the bulwarks. “The old man seems to read\r\nBelshazzar’s awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.\r\nHe goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three mighty,\r\nheaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint\r\nearthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over\r\nall our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a\r\nhope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;\r\nbut if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to\r\ncheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we\r\nwould fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain!\r\nThis coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.109Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.109Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}