{"id":"01KJNXJVAV9XHG4JHZT80HPFSV","cid":"bafkreihqwcsyfdkqg65h76nve3y5v4vfuhrqscglgetbfpskfn3ottz7pa","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1170761,"char_start":1162856,"chunk_index":164,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1977,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with\r\nhis prize.\r\n\r\nAn eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace\r\nit, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be\r\nking of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen\r\naccounted good. Ahab’s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on\r\nand on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared;\r\nwhile from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was\r\ndimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.\r\n\r\nThe intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the\r\nlife-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably\r\nmisnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were\r\nfixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some\r\nwhaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine\r\nfeet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.\r\n\r\nUpon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and\r\nsome few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you\r\nnow saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled,\r\nhalf-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.\r\n\r\n“Hast seen the White Whale?”\r\n\r\n“Look!” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with\r\nhis trumpet he pointed to the wreck.\r\n\r\n“Hast killed him?”\r\n\r\n“The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that,” answered the\r\nother, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose\r\ngathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.\r\n\r\n“Not forged!” and snatching Perth’s levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab\r\nheld it out, exclaiming—“Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold\r\nhis death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these\r\nbarbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the\r\nfin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!”\r\n\r\n“Then God keep thee, old man—see’st thou that”—pointing to the\r\nhammock—“I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only\r\nyesterday; but were dead ere night. Only _that_ one I bury; the rest\r\nwere buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb.” Then turning\r\nto his crew—“Are ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and\r\nlift the body; so, then—Oh! God”—advancing towards the hammock with\r\nuplifted hands—“may the resurrection and the life——”\r\n\r\n“Brace forward! Up helm!” cried Ahab like lightning to his men.\r\n\r\nBut the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the\r\nsound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea; not\r\nso quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have\r\nsprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.\r\n\r\nAs Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy\r\nhanging at the Pequod’s stern came into conspicuous relief.\r\n\r\n“Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!” cried a foreboding voice in her wake.\r\n“In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us your\r\ntaffrail to show us your coffin!”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 132. The Symphony.\r\n\r\nIt was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were\r\nhardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was\r\ntransparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and\r\nman-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s\r\nchest in his sleep.\r\n\r\nHither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,\r\nunspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;\r\nbut to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed\r\nmighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,\r\ntroubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.\r\n\r\nBut though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and\r\nshadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were,\r\nthat distinguished them.\r\n\r\nAloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle\r\nair to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the\r\ngirdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen\r\nhere at the equator—denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving\r\nalarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.\r\n\r\nTied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm\r\nand unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the\r\nashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the\r\nmorn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s\r\nforehead of heaven.\r\n\r\nOh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged\r\ncreatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how\r\noblivious were ye of old Ahab’s close-coiled woe! But so have I seen\r\nlittle Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around\r\ntheir old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on\r\nthe marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.\r\n\r\nSlowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side\r\nand watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the\r\nmore and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the\r\nlovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a\r\nmoment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that\r\nwinsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world,\r\nso long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn\r\nneck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that\r\nhowever wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save\r\nand to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into\r\nthe sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee\r\ndrop.\r\n\r\nStarbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side;\r\nand he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing\r\nthat stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to\r\ntouch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood\r\nthere.\r\n\r\nAhab turned.\r\n\r\n“Starbuck!”\r\n\r\n“Sir.”\r\n\r\n“Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such\r\na day—very much such a sweetness as this—I struck my first whale—a\r\nboy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty—forty—forty years ago!—ago! Forty\r\nyears of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and\r\nstorm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab\r\nforsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors\r\nof the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not\r\nspent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the\r\ndesolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a\r\nCaptain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any\r\nsympathy from the green country without—oh, weariness! heaviness!\r\nGuinea-coast slavery of solitary command!—when I think of all this;\r\nonly half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before—and how for forty\r\nyears I have fed upon dry salted fare—fit emblem of the dry nourishment\r\nof my soil!—when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily\r\nhand, and broken the world’s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts—away,\r\nwhole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and\r\nsailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage\r\npillow—wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I\r\nwidowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the\r\nmadness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with\r\nwhich, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly\r\nchased his prey—more a demon than a man!—aye, aye! what a forty years’\r\nfool—fool—old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase?\r\nwhy weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance?\r\nhow the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck!"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.195Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.195Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}