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- 12332
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:49:30.771Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 12287
- text
- from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to
gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took
Stubb’s long spade—still remaining there after the whale’s
decapitation—and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended
mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood
leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so
intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast
and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a
beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty
head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou
hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams,
has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and
navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous
hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the
drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar
home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many
a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay
them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their
flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true
to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the
murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours
he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his
murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the
neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to
outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the
planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!”
“Sail ho!” cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.
“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting
himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That
lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better
man.—Where away?”
“Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze
to us!
“Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way,
and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man!
how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the
smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate
in mind.”
- title
- Chunk 2