And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer
of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written
out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth,
and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg
in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work
in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read,
though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries
were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living
parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.
And this thought it must have been which suggested to Ahab that wild
exclamation of his, when one morning turning away from surveying poor
Queequeg--"Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods!"
CHAPTER 111
The Pacific
When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great
South Sea; were it not for other things I could have greeted my dear
Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth
was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand
leagues of blue.
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea,
whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath;
like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried
Evangelist St.
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