396 
MOBY DICK; OR 
terrupted labours, which know no night; continuing straight through 
for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled 
their wrists with all day rowing on the Line, — they only step to the 
deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and 
slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew 
by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try- 
works; when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred them- 
selves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it ; many 
is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean 
frocks, are startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and away they 
fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. 
Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. Lor 
hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s 
vast bulk its small but valuable sperm ; and then, with weary patience, 
cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in 
clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when — There she 
blows ! — the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other 
world, and go through young life’s old routine again. 
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, 
two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed 
with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage — and, foolish as I am, 
taught thee, a green simple boy, how to Splice a rope ! 
CHAPTER XCVIII 
THE DOUBLOON 
Eke now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter- 
deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast ; 
but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not 
been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged 
in his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand 
there strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When he 
halted before the binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed 
needle in the compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed 
intensity of his purpose ; and when resuming his walk he again paused 
