- description
- # AN AUCTION IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
## Overview
This entity is a scene titled "AN AUCTION IN A MAN-OF-WAR." It is part of Chapter XLVII of a larger work and was extracted from the file `white_jacket.txt`. The scene spans lines 7854 to 7876.
## Context
This scene is situated within Chapter XLVII, titled "AN AUCTION IN A MAN-OF-WAR.", which is part of a larger collection known as [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW). The scene follows the "Commencement of the auction for the white jacket" and precedes another scene within the same chapter. The text was extracted from the file `white_jacket.txt`.
## Contents
The scene depicts a moment during an auction where the narrator's white jacket is being criticized and is failing to attract bids. The narrator expresses internal distress and contemplates various ways to dispose of the jacket, ultimately being held back by superstitious fears of ill fortune if he were to discard it into the sea. The text highlights the narrator's emotional turmoil and his growing attachment to the jacket, comparing it to the fatal shirt of Nessus.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:49:49.245Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- AN AUCTION IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
- end_line
- 7876
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:16.646Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7854
- text
- old swabs overboard, _say I_, and show us something worth looking at.”
“No one will give me a bid, then? Very good; here, shove it aside.
Let’s have something else there.”
While this scene was going forward, and my white jacket was thus being
abused, how my heart swelled within me! Thrice was I on the point of
rushing out of my hiding-place, and bearing it off from derision; but I
lingered, still flattering myself that all would be well, and the
jacket find a purchaser at last. But no, alas! there was no getting rid
of it, except by rolling a forty-two-pound shot in it, and committing
it to the deep. But though, in my desperation, I had once contemplated
something of that sort, yet I had now become unaccountably averse to
it, from certain involuntary superstitious considerations. If I sink my
jacket, thought I, it will be sure to spread itself into a bed at the
bottom of the sea, upon which I shall sooner or later recline, a dead
man. So, unable to conjure it into the possession of another, and
withheld from burying it out of sight for ever, my jacket stuck to me
like the fatal shirt on Nessus.
- title
- AN AUCTION IN A MAN-OF-WAR.