{"id":"01KJNXJVBA0KD2BMNSB4S9X82X","cid":"bafkreic22kcpg76s5gfwt6duiuorhq7ezuklgadlg7ebybfrz22mcimoou","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1242121,"char_start":1234120,"chunk_index":174,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":2001,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities?\r\nOh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up\r\nhelm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on\r\ntowards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me\r\nnow!”\r\n\r\n“Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now\r\nhelp Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning\r\nwhale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb’s own\r\nunwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is\r\nall too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee,\r\nthou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins\r\nof as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would\r\nyet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh!\r\nthou grinning whale, but there’ll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye\r\nnot, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his\r\ndrawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;—cherries!\r\ncherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die!”\r\n\r\n“Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope\r\nmy poor mother’s drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will\r\nnow come to her, for the voyage is up.”\r\n\r\nFrom the ship’s bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers,\r\nbits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in their\r\nhands, just as they had darted from their various employments; all\r\ntheir enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side\r\nstrangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of\r\noverspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution,\r\nswift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of\r\nall that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead\r\nsmote the ship’s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell\r\nflat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the\r\nharpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the breach,\r\nthey heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.\r\n\r\n“The ship! The hearse!—the second hearse!” cried Ahab from the boat;\r\n“its wood could only be American!”\r\n\r\nDiving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its\r\nkeel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far\r\noff the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab’s boat, where, for a\r\ntime, he lay quiescent.\r\n\r\n“I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy\r\nhammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel;\r\nand only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and\r\nPole-pointed prow,—death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and\r\nwithout me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest\r\nshipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel\r\nmy topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your\r\nfurthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone\r\nlife, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll,\r\nthou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with\r\nthee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last\r\nbreath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!\r\nand since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still\r\nchasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! _Thus_, I give up\r\nthe spear!”\r\n\r\nThe harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting\r\nvelocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to\r\nclear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the\r\nneck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was\r\nshot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the\r\nheavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty\r\ntub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its\r\ndepths.\r\n\r\nFor an instant, the tranced boat’s crew stood still; then turned. “The\r\nship? Great God, where is the ship?” Soon they through dim, bewildering\r\nmediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata\r\nMorgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by\r\ninfatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the\r\npagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea.\r\nAnd now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its\r\ncrew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning,\r\nanimate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the\r\nsmallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.\r\n\r\nBut as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the\r\nsunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the\r\nerect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag,\r\nwhich calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying\r\nbillows they almost touched;—at that instant, a red arm and a hammer\r\nhovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the\r\nflag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that\r\ntauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home\r\namong the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there;\r\nthis bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between\r\nthe hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial\r\nthrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his\r\nhammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic\r\nshrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive\r\nform folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like\r\nSatan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of\r\nheaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.\r\n\r\nNow small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen\r\nwhite surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the\r\ngreat shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.\r\n\r\n\r\nEpilogue\r\n\r\n“AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE” Job.\r\n\r\nThe drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one\r\ndid survive the wreck.\r\n\r\nIt so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom the\r\nFates ordained to take the place of Ahab’s bowsman, when that bowsman\r\nassumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three\r\nmen were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So,\r\nfloating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it,\r\nwhen the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but\r\nslowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had\r\nsubsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting\r\ntowards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly\r\nwheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that\r\nvital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by\r\nreason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising\r\nwith great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea,\r\nfell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost\r\none whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The\r\nunharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths;\r\nthe savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a\r\nsail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the\r\ndevious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing\r\nchildren, only found another orphan.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHALE ***\r\n\r\n\r\n    \r\n\r\nUpdated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will\r\nbe renamed.\r\n\r\nCreating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright\r\nlaw means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,\r\nso the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United\r\nStates without permission and "},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV94RQAJGYF0Y1PBZWSW","peer_label":"tashtego","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV9JR5QVCDKHMH41830J","peer_label":"flask","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXH2GMRN3K01DR56AKFQ","peer_label":"harpoon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXNCK8G0E519GPWTEATV","peer_label":"ishmael","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMBEEXPP38477A08N9MXE","peer_label":"death of ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"event","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCXS789HGRHAVY6DBZXM","peer_label":"epilogue","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"document_section","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMC0CCQX390V172C01E39","peer_label":"flag of ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMD2NE509N1DYCFCCQP32","peer_label":"survival of ishmael","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCMVV4933M4QAZFRA5BX","peer_label":"sinking of the pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"event","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMBPMNTTGEQ1R0F9EGH6B","peer_label":"the whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"animal","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCVDEJKHKKZMBE0FHW7H","peer_label":"rachel","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMBXFYT375KMD86YZVRMX","peer_label":"coffin life-buoy","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCMN0M0JDCW3YFHVJY49","peer_label":"sky-hawk","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"animal","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMPE3ZJEHJ32K6KVBN9K9","peer_label":"ahabs bowsman","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCYHKB6NA083H04564WB","peer_label":"the parsee","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:03:40.154Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.210Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:03:49.496Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}