{"id":"01KJNXJVAVMZKBNREKEDRAGA6W","cid":"bafkreicbbmwxo5eh5ecn2g2n3qgp5zw5rjuunwskkvguuchqi43bjhfggy","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1163650,"char_start":1156147,"chunk_index":163,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1876,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole,\r\nor exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,—the\r\nmain-mast and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in the\r\ncabin-scuttle,—his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step;\r\nhis hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he\r\nstood, however the days and nights were added on, that he had not swung\r\nin his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never\r\ntell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at\r\ntimes; or whether he was still intently scanning them; no matter,\r\nthough he stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and\r\nthe unheeded night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved\r\ncoat and hat. The clothes that the night had wet, the next day’s\r\nsunshine dried upon him; and so, day after day, and night after night;\r\nhe went no more beneath the planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin\r\nthat thing he sent for.\r\n\r\nHe ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,—breakfast and\r\ndinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly\r\ngrew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still\r\ngrow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure. But\r\nthough his whole life was now become one watch on deck; and though the\r\nParsee’s mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these\r\ntwo never seemed to speak—one man to the other—unless at long intervals\r\nsome passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent\r\nspell seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck\r\ncrew, they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak\r\none word; by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the\r\nslightest verbal interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a\r\nsingle hail, they stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his\r\nscuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each\r\nother; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the\r\nParsee his abandoned substance.\r\n\r\nAnd yet, somehow, did Ahab—in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,\r\nand every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,—Ahab\r\nseemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again both\r\nseemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean\r\nshade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and\r\nkeel was solid Ahab.\r\n\r\nAt the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard\r\nfrom aft,—“Man the mast-heads!”—and all through the day, till after\r\nsunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking\r\nof the helmsman’s bell, was heard—“What d’ye see?—sharp! sharp!”\r\n\r\nBut when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the\r\nchildren-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac\r\nold man seemed distrustful of his crew’s fidelity; at least, of nearly\r\nall except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether\r\nStubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But\r\nif these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from\r\nverbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them.\r\n\r\n“I will have the first sight of the whale myself,”—he said. “Aye! Ahab\r\nmust have the doubloon!” and with his own hands he rigged a nest of\r\nbasketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved\r\nblock, to secure to the main-mast head, he received the two ends of the\r\ndownward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin\r\nfor the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done, with\r\nthat end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked round\r\nupon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long\r\nupon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then\r\nsettling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,—“Take the\r\nrope, sir—I give it into thy hands, Starbuck.” Then arranging his\r\nperson in the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him to his\r\nperch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope at last; and\r\nafterwards stood near it. And thus, with one hand clinging round the\r\nroyal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and miles,—ahead,\r\nastern, this side, and that,—within the wide expanded circle commanded\r\nat so great a height.\r\n\r\nWhen in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in\r\nthe rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is\r\nhoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these\r\ncircumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict\r\ncharge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in such\r\na wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations\r\naloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at\r\nthe deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few\r\nminutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural\r\nfatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor\r\nshould by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all\r\nswooping to the sea. So Ahab’s proceedings in this matter were not\r\nunusual; the only strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck,\r\nalmost the one only man who had ever ventured to oppose him with\r\nanything in the slightest degree approaching to decision—one of those\r\ntoo, whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt\r\nsomewhat;—it was strange, that this was the very man he should select\r\nfor his watchman; freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise\r\ndistrusted person’s hands.\r\n\r\nNow, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there ten\r\nminutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly\r\nincommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these\r\nlatitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his\r\nhead in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a\r\nthousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and\r\nwent eddying again round his head.\r\n\r\nBut with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed\r\nnot to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked\r\nit much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least\r\nheedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every\r\nsight.\r\n\r\n“Your hat, your hat, sir!” suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who\r\nbeing posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though\r\nsomewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing\r\nthem.\r\n\r\nBut already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes; the long\r\nhooked 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."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXNA7BK2RZA7FFZPQR6VVJ","peer_label":"cabin-scuttle","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ship_component","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM6EP73PJRV763QA81RVY","peer_label":"fedallah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCVDEJKHKKZMBE0FHW7H","peer_label":"rachel","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV9JR5QVCDKHMH41830J","peer_label":"flask","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXNA6Q7NV244AJQKVXKZ","peer_label":"queequeg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV8861P977B7BE45JR4K","peer_label":"daggoo","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKVYKWFDKYWNFAY5N9KE5","peer_label":"starbuck","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ359ZXZP8G5QF2NZ38S9","peer_label":"doubloon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFH3EM2DBZFQCHV8BBB5","peer_label":"ahabs hat","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"clothing_item","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV94RQAJGYF0Y1PBZWSW","peer_label":"tashtego","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXWQXKJD0ZC5ANS7TSJ7E1","peer_label":"tarquin","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"historical_figure","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXY4YPNKA306J3N5YP3VAT","peer_label":"rome","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"place","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXV65MXV3ZSQRC0J773AF2","peer_label":"mizen-mast","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ship_component","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXYXWX39D1S8W5W2Q58P30","peer_label":"the delight","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXWDK6VR0V010DATAHPK8Y","peer_label":"pagan harpooneers","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"group_of_people","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXY0P201DTJ2JZ36HFQ9QV","peer_label":"basketed bowlines","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXY78YAMFKMDAP3MAVZ656","peer_label":"sheaved block","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXY8SXADG7AW673S0NRD4Y","peer_label":"royal mast","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ship_component","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXYQZHN6YXXXB945RD22TN","peer_label":"sea-hawk","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"animal","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXYSE3JZTRH2Q0Y53VKEAP","peer_label":"sicilian seaman","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXYSFMDC2JXXB3KVQ19E0V","peer_label":"main-mast","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ship_component","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXYWKD2WS7EJB2CA583W0B","peer_label":"tanaquil","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"historical_figure","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXZ2FYSPC7TEQCJTGMMYZP","peer_label":"life-buoy-coffin","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXZ5Q8H58AY87KXYEYMYNC","peer_label":"chapter 131","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"document_section","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:13.990Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.195Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:15.052Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}