Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now defunct ERIS project at Virginia Tech and...

While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his head, and tow it with a boat...

In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle, Fishes of...

The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if possible, to discover a...

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and...

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous...

It was a queer sort of place a gable ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over...

Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about a table, examining by a dim...

Just as you please; Im sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and its a plaguy rough...

I considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered into a small room,...

I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime to see...

Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very...

If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as Queequeg...

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this special errand. The sky had...

I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a...

Now Jonahs Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity...

He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a...

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between...

Next morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I settled my...

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red men. Thus goes...

Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its name; for the pots there...

I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask of these half humorous...

So that there are instances among them of men, who, named with Scripture names a singularly common...

Captain Peleg, said Bildad steadily, thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water, or ten...

Queequeg. Queequeg. all still. Something must have happened. Apoplexy. I tried to burst open the...

I went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long stories of some sailors who...

Yes, said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from behind Pelegs, out of the...

Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling our harpooneer, cried Peleg. Pious harpooneers...

Elijah. thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each others fashion, upon this ragged...

Morning to ye. morning to ye. he rejoined, again moving off. Oh. I was going to warn ye against but...

Now in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the...

When on that shivering winters night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious...

That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to the enlightened world...

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a...

Now these three mates Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were momentous men. They it was who by universal...

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came...

Such a queer dream, King Post, I never had. You know the old mans ivory leg, well I dreamed he...

But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter sorter in the Post Office is equal to it. To grope...

BOOK I. Folio, CHAPTER III. Fin Back. Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various...

The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard like look, being of a milk white ground colour, dotted...

The large importance attached to the harpooneers vocation is evinced by the fact, that originally...

Over his ivory inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea lion on the white coral beach,...

In one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years voyage, as often happens, the sum...

But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning...

Captain Ahab, said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with...

Advance, ye mates. Cross your lances full before me. Well done. Let me touch the axis. So saying,...

Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy glass in his hand, A viewing of those gallant whales That...

I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with...

Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit altogether without some faint show of...

This is much; yet Ahabs larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain to popularize...

I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the...

Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of...

It was the middle watch. a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a cordon, extending from one...

There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his delirious but still methodical...

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other...

By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day we were out in the open sea,...

Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion mankind disdain all base...

Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the men sprang over the rail; the...

Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat, the gigantic negro,...

It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe. The vast swells of the omnipotent sea; the surging,...

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man...

Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; for in a whaler wonders...

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye. Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called of yore; for long allured by...

If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the equally desolate Salisbury...

Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen,...

But there was more than this. the order about the shovel was almost as plainly meant to sting and...

Steelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there, defied the worst the pistols...

Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he and all his armed mates and...

During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the bulwarks of the quarter deck,...

Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa nut trees,...

In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you will at times meet with very...

In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those...

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which...

As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their scythes through the long...

Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held on her way north eastward towards...

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapored with tar, not...

It was my turn to stand at the foremast head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened...

From the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now...

Furthermore. you must know that when the second iron is thrown overboard, it thenceforth becomes a...

Cook, cook. wheres that old Fleece. he cried at length, widening his legs still further, as if to...

And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape Town, where you doubtless overheard a...

When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, is brought...

Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very...

The Pequods whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head was hoisted against the ships...

So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed Thats he. thats he. the long...

Curses throttle thee. yelled Ahab. Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive it; and taking the fatal...

But courage. there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg. For now, as with blue lips and blood...

I dont know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so, and he seems to know all about...

In disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the ship, the same preliminary...

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye,...

As every one knows, these same hogs bristles, fins, whiskers, blinds, or whatever you please,...

The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing...

Ha. ha. cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch overhead; and looking further...

But how. Genius in the Sperm Whale. Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech. No,...

Not that, said Stubb, no, no, its a coffee pot, Mr. Starbuck; hes coming off to make us our coffee,...

Oh. see the suds he makes. cried Flask, dancing up and down What a hump Oh, do pile on the beef...

As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon;...

Hold on, hold on, wont ye. cried Stubb to the body, dont be in such a devil of a hurry to sink. By...

But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of Hercules and the whale is...

But before going further, it is important to mention here, that though the harpoon may be...

Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air,...

Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether wielded in sport, or in...

Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing midway in that vast rampart of...

Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our rear. It seemed formed of...

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes...

The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious saying in the Fishery, the...

Another point of difference between the male and female schools is still more characteristic of the...

What was America in 1492 but a Loose Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of...

Presently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the distance lay a ship, whose furled...

By this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was a small and dark, but rather...

I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates,...

Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon....

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever. For now, since by many prolonged, repeated...

Bible leaves. Bible leaves. This is the invariable cry from the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him...

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginias Dismal Swamp, nor Romes accursed Campagna, nor wide...

Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously discourse of...

There nows the old Mogul, soliloquized Stubb by the try works, hes been twigging it; and there goes...

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward circumstance that befell him, and...

Oh. cried the one armed captain, oh, yes. Well; after he sounded, we didnt see him again for some...

The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders, and Danes; from whom...

Among many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all...

According to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base upon Captain Scoresbys...

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an...

Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of such gentlemen as Pliny, and...

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable...

A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole. the carpenter claps it into...

It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once was; so, now, here is only one...

Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack forming part of most South Sea mens cabin furniture, and...

Going to his vice bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general reference, now...

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to...

With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark skin apron, about mid day, Perth was standing...

Penetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising ground, the Pequod was soon...

And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter deck, shaggy and black, with a stubborn gloom; and as...

The waif pole was thrust upright into the dead whales spout hole; and the lantern hanging from its...

Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs. the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of...

Blast the boat. let it go. cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing sea heaved up under his own...

Overhearing Starbuck, the panic stricken crew instantly ran to the braces though not a sail was...

The three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a storm trysail was set further...

Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than one case occurred to ships...

I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the log line. But...

Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers of seals, and some young...

Aye, and thats because the lid theres a sounding board; and what in all things makes the sounding...

I will not go, said the stranger, till you say aye to me. Do to me as you would have me do to you...

But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours; when he thought no glance but...

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquins head, removing his cap to replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil,...

Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure. Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round...

All sail being set, he now cast loose the life line, reserved for swaying him to the main royal...

Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation, was...

Thats good. Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him. there. there. going to leeward still;...

And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies of the chase had by this time...