{"id":"01KJNXJV9KGVJ4KEE9Q5ECMRMJ","cid":"bafkreiahf4d6hpnvfy6hsj2hsxo57zwrxi6dgz5nmhoebjml5spahz4b7y","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1085178,"char_start":1077540,"chunk_index":152,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1910,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing\r\nstill nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge\r\ntry-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like _poke_ or stomach skin\r\nof the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the\r\nclenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and\r\nharpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with\r\nthem from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamented boat,\r\nfirmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three Long\r\nIsland negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were\r\npresiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship’s\r\ncompany were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the try-works, from\r\nwhich the huge pots had been removed. You would have almost thought\r\nthey were pulling down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries they\r\nraised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled into the\r\nsea.\r\n\r\nLord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the\r\nship’s elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was\r\nfull before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual\r\ndiversion.\r\n\r\nAnd Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,\r\nwith a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other’s\r\nwakes—one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings\r\nas to things to come—their two captains in themselves impersonated the\r\nwhole striking contrast of the scene.\r\n\r\n“Come aboard, come aboard!” cried the gay Bachelor’s commander, lifting\r\na glass and a bottle in the air.\r\n\r\n“Hast seen the White Whale?” gritted Ahab in reply.\r\n\r\n“No; only heard of him; but don’t believe in him at all,” said the\r\nother good-humoredly. “Come aboard!”\r\n\r\n“Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?”\r\n\r\n“Not enough to speak of—two islanders, that’s all;—but come aboard, old\r\nhearty, come along. I’ll soon take that black from your brow. Come\r\nalong, will ye (merry’s the play); a full ship and homeward-bound.”\r\n\r\n“How wondrous familiar is a fool!” muttered Ahab; then aloud, “Thou art\r\na full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an\r\nempty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward\r\nthere! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!”\r\n\r\nAnd thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the other\r\nstubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the crew\r\nof the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances towards the\r\nreceding Bachelor; but the Bachelor’s men never heeding their gaze for\r\nthe lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the\r\ntaffrail, eyed the homeward-bound craft, he took from his pocket a\r\nsmall vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed\r\nthereby bringing two remote associations together, for that vial was\r\nfilled with Nantucket soundings.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.\r\n\r\nNot seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favourites\r\nsail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the\r\nrushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed\r\nit with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor,\r\nwhales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.\r\n\r\nIt was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the\r\ncrimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky,\r\nsun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and\r\nsuch plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy\r\nair, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent\r\nvalleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned\r\nsailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.\r\n\r\nSoothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned\r\noff from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the\r\nnow tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm\r\nwhales dying—the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring—that\r\nstrange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab\r\nconveyed a wondrousness unknown before.\r\n\r\n“He turns and turns him to it,—how slowly, but how steadfastly, his\r\nhomage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too\r\nworships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!—Oh\r\nthat these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.\r\nLook! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in\r\nthese most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks\r\nfurnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still\r\nrolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the\r\nNiger’s unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith;\r\nbut see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it\r\nheads some other way.\r\n\r\n“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded\r\nthy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;\r\nthou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the\r\nwide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor\r\nhas this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round\r\nagain, without a lesson to me.\r\n\r\n“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring,\r\nrainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In\r\nvain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening\r\nsun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou,\r\ndarker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy\r\nunnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of\r\nonce living things, exhaled as air, but water now.\r\n\r\n“Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild\r\nfowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though\r\nhill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.\r\n\r\nThe four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to\r\nwindward; one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These\r\nlast three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one\r\ncould not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay\r\nby its side all night; and that boat was Ahab’s.\r\n\r\nThe waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale’s spout-hole; and\r\nthe lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon\r\nthe black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which\r\ngently chafed the whale’s broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach.\r\n\r\nAhab and all his boat’s crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who\r\ncrouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played\r\nround the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails. A\r\nsound like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven\r\nghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.\r\n\r\nStarted from his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and\r\nhooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a\r\nflooded world. “I have dreamed it again,” said he.\r\n\r\n“Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor\r\ncoffin can be thine?”\r\n\r\n“And who are hearsed that die on the sea?”\r\n\r\n“But I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two\r\nhearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by\r\nmortal hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in\r\nAmerica.”\r\n\r\n“Aye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:—a hearse and its plumes\r\nfloating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha!"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.155Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.155Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}