{"id":"01KJNXJVA8H9XASDX1PWJGW4FP","cid":"bafkreifcxsm4dxa5ly3ynlrnywhi4df7c2tudlcbwnzugstnkhqroy7vuq","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1142533,"char_start":1134613,"chunk_index":160,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1980,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"had heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said nay.\r\n\r\nThe lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to see\r\nto it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as in\r\nthe feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the\r\nvoyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly\r\nconnected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be;\r\ntherefore, they were going to leave the ship’s stern unprovided with a\r\nbuoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg hinted a\r\nhint concerning his coffin.\r\n\r\n“A life-buoy of a coffin!” cried Starbuck, starting.\r\n\r\n“Rather queer, that, I should say,” said Stubb.\r\n\r\n“It will make a good enough one,” said Flask, “the carpenter here can\r\narrange it easily.”\r\n\r\n“Bring it up; there’s nothing else for it,” said Starbuck, after a\r\nmelancholy pause. “Rig it, carpenter; do not look at me so—the coffin,\r\nI mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it.”\r\n\r\n“And shall I nail down the lid, sir?” moving his hand as with a hammer.\r\n\r\n“Aye.”\r\n\r\n“And shall I caulk the seams, sir?” moving his hand as with a\r\ncaulking-iron.\r\n\r\n“Aye.”\r\n\r\n“And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?” moving his hand\r\nas with a pitch-pot.\r\n\r\n“Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and\r\nno more.—Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me.”\r\n\r\n“He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he\r\nbaulks. Now I don’t like this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he\r\nwears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he\r\nwon’t put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with\r\nthat coffin? And now I’m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It’s like\r\nturning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I\r\ndon’t like this cobbling sort of business—I don’t like it at all; it’s\r\nundignified; it’s not my place. Let tinkers’ brats do tinkerings; we\r\nare their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin,\r\nfair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins at\r\nthe beginning, and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at\r\nthe conclusion; not a cobbler’s job, that’s at an end in the middle,\r\nand at the beginning at the end. It’s the old woman’s tricks to be\r\ngiving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all old women have for\r\ntinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who ran away with a\r\nbald-headed young tinker once. And that’s the reason I never would work\r\nfor lonely widow old women ashore, when I kept my job-shop in the\r\nVineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run\r\noff with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let\r\nme see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with\r\npitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over\r\nthe ship’s stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some\r\nsuperstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere\r\nthey would do the job. But I’m made of knotty Aroostook hemlock; I\r\ndon’t budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing about with a grave-yard\r\ntray! But never mind. We workers in woods make bridal-bedsteads and\r\ncard-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We work by the month, or\r\nby the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore\r\nof our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling, and then we stash it\r\nif we can. Hem! I’ll do the job, now, tenderly. I’ll have me—let’s\r\nsee—how many in the ship’s company, all told? But I’ve forgotten. Any\r\nway, I’ll have me thirty separate, Turk’s-headed life-lines, each three\r\nfeet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down,\r\nthere’ll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight\r\nnot seen very often beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron,\r\npitch-pot, and marling-spike! Let’s to it.”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 127. The Deck.\r\n\r\n_The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the\r\nopen hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted\r\noakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of\r\nhis frock.—Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip\r\nfollowing him._\r\n\r\n“Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand\r\ncomplies with my humor more genially than that boy.—Middle aisle of a\r\nchurch! What’s here?”\r\n\r\n“Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck’s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the\r\nhatchway!”\r\n\r\n“Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.”\r\n\r\n“Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does.”\r\n\r\n“Art not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy\r\nshop?”\r\n\r\n“I believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?”\r\n\r\n“Well enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?”\r\n\r\n“Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg; but\r\nthey’ve set me now to turning it into something else.”\r\n\r\n“Then tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,\r\nmonopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the\r\nnext day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those\r\nsame coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a\r\njack-of-all-trades.”\r\n\r\n“But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.”\r\n\r\n“The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a\r\ncoffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the\r\ncraters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in\r\nhand. Dost thou never?”\r\n\r\n“Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I’m indifferent enough, sir, for that; but\r\nthe reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there\r\nwas none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark\r\nto it.”\r\n\r\n“Aye, and that’s because the lid there’s a sounding-board; and what in\r\nall things makes the sounding-board is this—there’s naught beneath. And\r\nyet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.\r\nHast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against\r\nthe churchyard gate, going in?\r\n\r\n“Faith, sir, I’ve——”\r\n\r\n“Faith? What’s that?”\r\n\r\n“Why, faith, sir, it’s only a sort of exclamation-like—that’s all,\r\nsir.”\r\n\r\n“Um, um; go on.”\r\n\r\n“I was about to say, sir, that——”\r\n\r\n“Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?\r\nLook at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.”\r\n\r\n“He goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot\r\nlatitudes. I’ve heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the\r\nGallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some\r\nsort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He’s always\r\nunder the Line—fiery hot, I tell ye! He’s looking this way—come, oakum;\r\nquick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I’m the\r\nprofessor of musical glasses—tap, tap!”\r\n\r\n(_Ahab to himself_.)\r\n\r\n“There’s a sight! There’s a sound! The greyheaded woodpecker tapping\r\nthe hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that\r\nthing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag,\r\nthat fellow. Rat-tat! So man’s seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all\r\nmaterials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here\r\nnow’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the\r\nexpressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A\r\nlife-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some\r\nspiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!\r\nI’ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth,\r\nthat its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain\r\ntwilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed\r\nsound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return again.\r\nNow, then, Pip, we’ll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous\r\nphilosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds\r\nmust empty into thee!”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 128."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.176Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.176Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}