Moby Dick

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all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let them be, sir."

"Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The corpusants! the corpusants!"

All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each
tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of
the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like
three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.

"Blast the boat! let it go!" cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing
sea heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale violently
jammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. "Blast it!"--but
slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and
immediately shifting his tone he cried--"The corpusants have mercy on us
all!"

To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of