“In the heavens, or in the sea, I care not, provided he be gone.”

“Most seamen would rejoice to sec a strange sail, from the hull of a vessel shaved to the deck like this.”

“Men often court their destruction, from ignorance of their own interests.  Let him drive on, say I, and pray I!  He goes four feet to our one; and I ask no better favour than that this hurricane may blow until the sun shall rise.”

Knighthead started, and cast an oblique glance, which resembled denunciation, at his companion.  To his superstitious mind, there was profanity in thus invoking the tempest, at a moment when the winds seemed already to be pouring out their utmost wrath.

“This is a heavy squall, I will allow,” he said, “and such a one as many mariners pass whole lives without seeing; but he knows little of the sea who thinks there is not more wind where this comes from.”

“Let it blow!” cried the other, striking his hands together a little wildly; “I pray for wind!”

All the doubts of Knighthead, as to the character of the young stranger who had so unaccountably got possession of the office of Nicholas Nichols, if any remained, were now removed.  He walked forward among the silent and thoughtful crew, with the air of a man whose opinion was settled.  Wilder, however, paid no attention to the movements of his subordinate, but continued pacing the deck for hours; now casting his eyes at the heavens, and now sending frequent and anxious glances around the limited horizon, while the Royal Caroline still continued drifting before the wind, a shorn and naked wreck.

THE CAPTURE OF THE GREAT WHITE WHALE

From “Moby Dick,” BY HERMAN MELVILLE

That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—­as his wont at intervals—­stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle.  He declared that a whale must be near.  Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship’s course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.

The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.

“Man the mast-heads!  Call all hands!”

Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes in their hands.