{"id":"01KJNXJVBARW1ASEPSYGBCNBFK","cid":"bafkreihkbtkdnc6te4ofbj2ipsxdicxiexbc4blfgcoj2yqbm6njm2vbru","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1220436,"char_start":1212495,"chunk_index":171,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1986,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round\r\nme, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered\r\nlance; propped up on a lonely foot. ’Tis Ahab—his body’s part; but\r\nAhab’s soul’s a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel\r\nstrained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a\r\ngale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye’ll hear me crack; and till\r\nye hear _that_, know that Ahab’s hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe\r\nye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore!\r\nFor ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface;\r\nthen rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick—two days he’s\r\nfloated—tomorrow will be the third. Aye, men, he’ll rise once more,—but\r\nonly to spout his last! D’ye feel brave men, brave?”\r\n\r\n“As fearless fire,” cried Stubb.\r\n\r\n“And as mechanical,” muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward, he\r\nmuttered on: “The things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same\r\nto Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek\r\nto drive out of others’ hearts what’s clinched so fast in mine!—The\r\nParsee—the Parsee!—gone, gone? and he was to go before:—but still was\r\nto be seen again ere I could perish—How’s that?—There’s a riddle now\r\nmight baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of\r\njudges:—like a hawk’s beak it pecks my brain. _I’ll_, _I’ll_ solve it,\r\nthough!”\r\n\r\nWhen dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.\r\n\r\nSo once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as on\r\nthe previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the\r\ngrindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by\r\nlanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and\r\nsharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken\r\nkeel of Ahab’s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while\r\nstill as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his\r\nscuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its\r\ndial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day.\r\n\r\nThe morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the\r\nsolitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the\r\ndaylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.\r\n\r\n“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.\r\n\r\n“In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all. Helm\r\nthere; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day\r\nagain! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the\r\nangels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a\r\nfairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here’s food for thought, had\r\nAhab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels;\r\n_that’s_ tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity. God only\r\nhas that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness\r\nand a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too\r\nmuch for that. And yet, I’ve sometimes thought my brain was very\r\ncalm—frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the\r\ncontents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing\r\nnow; this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it’s like\r\nthat sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy\r\nclefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow\r\nit; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the\r\ntossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this\r\nthrough prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and\r\nventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces.\r\nOut upon it!—it’s tainted. Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a\r\nwicked, miserable world. I’d crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink\r\nthere. And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever\r\nconquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run\r\ntilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that\r\nstrikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow.\r\nEven Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing than _that_. Would now the\r\nwind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and\r\noutrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as\r\nobjects, not as agents. There’s a most special, a most cunning, oh, a\r\nmost malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that\r\nthere’s something all glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm\r\nTrade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in\r\nstrong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark,\r\nhowever the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest\r\nMississippies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go\r\nat last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly\r\nblow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them—something so\r\nunchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it!\r\nAloft there! What d’ye see?”\r\n\r\n“Nothing, sir.”\r\n\r\n“Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!\r\nAye, aye, it must be so. I’ve oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye,\r\nhe’s chasing _me_ now; not I, _him_—that’s bad; I might have known it,\r\ntoo. Fool! the lines—the harpoons he’s towing. Aye, aye, I have run him\r\nby last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the regular look\r\nouts! Man the braces!”\r\n\r\nSteering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod’s\r\nquarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced\r\nship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own\r\nwhite wake.\r\n\r\n“Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,” murmured Starbuck to\r\nhimself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. “God\r\nkeep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside\r\nwet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!”\r\n\r\n“Stand by to sway me up!” cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket.\r\n“We should meet him soon.”\r\n\r\n“Aye, aye, sir,” and straightway Starbuck did Ahab’s bidding, and once\r\nmore Ahab swung on high.\r\n\r\nA whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held\r\nlong breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the\r\nweather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the\r\nthree mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had\r\nvoiced it.\r\n\r\n“Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On deck\r\nthere!—brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind’s eye. He’s too far\r\noff to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that\r\nhelmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But\r\nlet me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there’s\r\ntime for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and\r\nnot changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of\r\nNantucket! The same!—the same!—the same to Noah as to me. There’s a\r\nsoft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They must lead\r\nsomewhere—to something else than common land, more palmy than the\r\npalms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward, then;\r\nthe better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old\r\nmast-head! What’s this?—green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks.\r\nNo such green weather stains on Ahab’s head! There’s the difference now\r\nbetween man’s old age and matter’s. But aye, old mast, we both grow old\r\ntogether; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a\r\nleg, that’s all. By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live\r\nflesh every way. I can’t compare with it; and I’ve known some ships\r\nmade of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital\r\nstuff of vital fathers. What’s that he said?"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKVYKWFDKYWNFAY5N9KE5","peer_label":"starbuck","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM529XJRPQXV0DC58V32N","peer_label":"moby dick","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMCYHKB6NA083H04564WB","peer_label":"the parsee","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM3RZM6Z8NNW2JP8QY3TR","peer_label":"god","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"deity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM423TTC0Y0A1Y0X78QFB","peer_label":"nantucket","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"place","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ0QFZBJNHQKZQ941W4J5","peer_label":"doubloon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN90YV2P3KTR6FQN0CWCA","peer_label":"omens","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNA07WFPJE6G7FFAATAF4","peer_label":"greenland ice","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"place","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNA7Z4KZRY32QG9P9JKKY","peer_label":"ahabs new leg","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"prosthetic","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNDTW2VRJ6FHJTJG2HTYP","peer_label":"carpenter","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"role","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFGZ1MP2W7CEASFF8ED1","peer_label":"wild winds","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"natural_phenomenon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFS8ZHZFD7ENP8N3S9HP","peer_label":"vesuvius lava","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"place","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN8NMB9WVB9PQTEN6TT1Y","peer_label":"broken boat","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFS8HA1N4900E6FGQM69","peer_label":"hempen basket","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"object","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNDRFN88CKN8S5PFY5T7A","peer_label":"chapter 135 the chasethird day","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"chapter","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNVTSNMXFPYYKF9XV693V","peer_label":"scuttle","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNF9SGBDPJRW2P9KX0KME","peer_label":"trade winds","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"natural_phenomenon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ0XHKEB7GM2WSC0TM9S2","peer_label":"noah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:09.175Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.210Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:10.429Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}