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136 Chapters
With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible…
If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object. “When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoist…
A word concerning an incident in the last chapter. According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary steersman…
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters. The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention. It is a notched sti…
Stubb’s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighte…
That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the…
When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the busine…
It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. Yo…
I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opi…
“Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!” The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has…
