32 
MOBY DICK; OR 
SACRED 
To the Memory 
of 
The late 
CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, 
Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a 
Sperm Whale on the coast of J apan, 
August 3 d, 1833. 
THIS TABLET 
Is erected to his Memory 
BY 
HIS WIDOW. 
Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated my- 
self near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg 
near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a wonder- 
ing gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage was 
the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance ; because he 
was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading 
those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of 
the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congrega- 
tion, I knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the 
fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance 
if not the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here 
before me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of 
those bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed 
afresh. 
Oh ! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass ; who standing 
among flowers can say — here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the 
desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in 
those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes ! What despair in 
those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infi- 
delities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all F aith, and refuse resur- 
rections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. 
As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. 
In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included ; 
why is it that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no tales, 
