{"id":"01KJNXJVA8N04CEM22BWDH96SX","cid":"bafkreibnmqqa2zcqhqicp33lul4gndcz4ci4ycptp6znfwh7mfdwjoylpy","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1135372,"char_start":1127376,"chunk_index":159,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1999,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"\r\nThe log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long\r\ndragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In\r\nturn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing\r\nresistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.\r\n\r\n“Hold hard!”\r\n\r\nSnap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the\r\ntugging log was gone.\r\n\r\n“I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad\r\nsea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian;\r\nreel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and\r\nmend thou the line. See to it.”\r\n\r\n“There he goes now; to him nothing’s happened; but to me, the skewer\r\nseems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in,\r\nTahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and\r\ndragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?”\r\n\r\n“Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip’s missing.\r\nLet’s see now if ye haven’t fished him up here, fisherman. It drags\r\nhard; I guess he’s holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul\r\nin no cowards here. Ho! there’s his arm just breaking water. A hatchet!\r\na hatchet! cut it off—we haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir,\r\nsir! here’s Pip, trying to get on board again.”\r\n\r\n“Peace, thou crazy loon,” cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.\r\n“Away from the quarter-deck!”\r\n\r\n“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,” muttered Ahab, advancing.\r\n“Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?\r\n\r\n“Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!”\r\n\r\n“And who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of\r\nthy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to\r\nsieve through! Who art thou, boy?”\r\n\r\n“Bell-boy, sir; ship’s-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip! One\r\nhundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high—looks\r\ncowardly—quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip the\r\ncoward?”\r\n\r\n“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens!\r\nlook down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned\r\nhim, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s\r\nhome henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy;\r\nthou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let’s\r\ndown.”\r\n\r\n“What’s this? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s\r\nhand, and feeling it. “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing\r\nas this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a\r\nman-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth\r\nnow come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the\r\nwhite, for I will not let this go.”\r\n\r\n“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse\r\nhorrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in\r\ngods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods\r\noblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not\r\nwhat he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come!\r\nI feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an\r\nEmperor’s!”\r\n\r\n“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One daft with\r\nstrength, the other daft with weakness. But here’s the end of the\r\nrotten line—all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a\r\nnew line altogether. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.\r\n\r\nSteering now south-eastward by Ahab’s levelled steel, and her progress\r\nsolely determined by Ahab’s level log and line; the Pequod held on her\r\npath towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such\r\nunfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways\r\nimpelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all\r\nthese seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and\r\ndesperate scene.\r\n\r\nAt last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the\r\nEquatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before\r\nthe dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch—then\r\nheaded by Flask—was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and\r\nunearthly—like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod’s\r\nmurdered Innocents—that one and all, they started from their reveries,\r\nand for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all\r\ntransfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild\r\ncry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the\r\ncrew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers\r\nremained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman—the oldest mariner of\r\nall—declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the\r\nvoices of newly drowned men in the sea.\r\n\r\nBelow in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when he\r\ncame to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not\r\nunaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus\r\nexplained the wonder.\r\n\r\nThose rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great\r\nnumbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or\r\nsome dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and\r\nkept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of\r\nwail. But this only the more affected some of them, because most\r\nmariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not\r\nonly from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the\r\nhuman look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen\r\npeeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain\r\ncircumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men.\r\n\r\nBut the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible\r\nconfirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At\r\nsun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;\r\nand whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for\r\nsailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus\r\nwith the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may, he had\r\nnot been long at his perch, when a cry was heard—a cry and a\r\nrushing—and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and\r\nlooking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the\r\nsea.\r\n\r\nThe life-buoy—a long slender cask—was dropped from the stern, where it\r\nalways hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to seize it,\r\nand the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so that it\r\nslowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its every pore; and\r\nthe studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to\r\nyield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.\r\n\r\nAnd thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out\r\nfor the White Whale, on the White Whale’s own peculiar ground; that man\r\nwas swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the\r\ntime. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at\r\nleast as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of\r\nevil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged.\r\nThey declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they\r\nhad 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 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