416 
MOBY DICK; OR 
away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deaf- 
ened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we too, 
who look on the loom are deafened ; and only when we escape it shall 
we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in 
all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among 
the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the 
walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies 
been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din 
of the great world’s loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. 
Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, 
the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging — a gigantic idler! 
Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and 
hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver ; him- 
self all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, 
fresher verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death 
trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him 
curly-headed glories. 
Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and 
saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where 
the real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel 
as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the 
priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro 
I paced before this skeleton — brushed the vines aside — broke 
through the ribs — and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, 
eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours. 
But soon my line was out; and following it back, I emerged from the 
opening where I entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was 
there but bones. 
Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the 
skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me 
taking the altitude of the final rib. “How now!” they shouted; 
“Dar’st thou measure this our god ! That’s for us.” “Aye, priests — 
well, how long do you make him, then ?” But hereupon a fierce con- 
test rose among them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked each 
other’s sconces with their yard-sticks — the great skull echoed — and 
seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements. 
