Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.
For 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 99
The Doubloon
Ere 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 before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance
fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same
aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing,
if not hopefulness.
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