96 
MOBY DICK; OR 
But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy. She 
must fly all hospitality; one touch of land though it but graze the 
keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her 
might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights against the very 
winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s 
landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her 
only friend her bitterest foe ! 
Know ye, now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that 
mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the 
intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; 
while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on 
the treacherous, slavish shore ? 
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, in- 
definite as God — so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than 
be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety ! 
For worm-like, then, oh ! who would craven crawl to land ! Ter- 
rors of the terrible ! is all this agony so vain ? Take heart, take 
heart, O Bulkington ! Bear thee grimly, demigod ! Up from 
the spray of thy ocean-perishing — straight up, leaps thy apothe- 
sis ! 
CHAPTER XXIV 
THE ADVOCATE 
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling ; 
and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded 
among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit ; there- 
fore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice 
hereby done to us hunters of whales: 
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish 
the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not 
accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If 
a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, 
it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he 
presented to the company as a harpooneer, say ; and if in emulation of 
the naval officers he should append the initials S. W. F. (Sperm Whale 
