- end_line
- 19948
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-23T15:41:06.412Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 19918
- text
- cowardly—quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who’s seen Pip the
coward?”
“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens!
look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned
him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab’s cabin shall be Pip’s
home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy;
thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let’s
down.”
“What’s this? here’s velvet shark-skin,” intently gazing at Ahab’s
hand, and feeling it. “Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing
as this, perhaps he had ne’er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a
man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth
now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the
white, for I will not let this go.”
“Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse
horrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in
gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods
oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not
what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come!
I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an
Emperor’s!”
“There go two daft ones now,” muttered the old Manxman. “One daft with
strength, the other daft with weakness. But here’s the end of the
rotten line—all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a
new line altogether. I’ll see Mr. Stubb about it.”
- title
- Chunk 7