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MOBY DICK; OR 
seductive seas in which we Southern fishers mostly float. For one, I 
used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have 
a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find 
there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg 
over the topsail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, 
and so at last mount to my ultimate destination. 
Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I 
kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in 
me, how could I — being left completely to myself at such a thought- 
engendering altitude, — how could I but lightly hold my obligations 
to observe all whale ships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye 
open, and sing out every time.” 
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of 
Kantucket ! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with 
lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and 
who offers to ship with Phsedon instead of Bowditch in his head. 
Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they 
can be killed; and this sunken-eyed Platonist will tow you ten wakes 
round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. 
Kor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale- 
fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and ab- 
sent-minded men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seek- 
ing sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently 
perches himself upon the masthead of some luckless disappointed whale- 
ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates — 
“Poll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll ! 
Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.” 
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded 
young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient 
“interest” in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost 
to all honourable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would 
rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young 
Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect ; they are short- 
sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left 
their opera-glasses at home. 
