Moby Dick

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pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he
caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after
some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill
of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few
long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his
frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones
grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller;
they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply
looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that
immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And like
circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes
seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that
cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this
waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who
were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and
fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing
near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last