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- 2390
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-18T02:42:17.946Z
- extracted_by
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- start_line
- 2334
- text
- confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the
man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but
still serious way, one whispers to the other—“Jack, he’s robbed a
widow;” or, “Joe, do you mark him; he’s a bigamist;” or, “Harry lad, I
guess he’s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike,
one of the missing murderers from Sodom.” Another runs to read the bill
that’s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is
moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a
parricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and
looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now
crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah
trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so
much the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that
itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the
sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him
pass, and he descends into the cabin.
“‘Who’s there?’ cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making
out his papers for the Customs—‘Who’s there?’ Oh! how that harmless
question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again.
But he rallies. ‘I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon
sail ye, sir?’ Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah,
though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that
hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. ‘We sail with the
next coming tide,’ at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing
him. ‘No sooner, sir?’—‘Soon enough for any honest man that goes a
passenger.’ Ha! Jonah, that’s another stab. But he swiftly calls away
the Captain from that scent. ‘I’ll sail with ye,’—he says,—‘the passage
money how much is that?—I’ll pay now.’ For it is particularly written,
shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history,
‘that he paid the fare thereof’ ere the craft did sail. And taken with
the context, this is full of meaning.
“Now Jonah’s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects
crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In
this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and
without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all
frontiers. So Jonah’s Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah’s
purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum;
and it’s assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive;
but at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with
gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions
still molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit.
Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his
passage. ‘Point out my state-room, Sir,’ says Jonah now, ‘I’m
travel-weary; I need sleep.’ ‘Thou lookest like it,’ says the Captain,
‘there’s thy room.’ Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock
contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain
laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of
convicts’ cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed
and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the
little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is
close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too,
beneath the ship’s water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment
of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of
his bowels’ wards.
- title
- Chunk 11