Moby Dick

Back Forward Menu

being calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the
slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight
sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they
go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost
puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone cask
containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards,
vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after
tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and
iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks
were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if
you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea
like an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless
student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons
did not visit them then.

Now, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast
bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh