Moby Dick

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anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the
course steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average rate of
progression every hour. It had been thus with the Pequod. The wooden
reel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the
railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; sun and
wind had warped it; all the elements had combined to rot a thing that
hung so idly. But heedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he
happened to glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene,
and he remembered how his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic
oath about the level log and line. The ship was sailing plungingly;
astern the billows rolled in riots.

"Forward, there! Heave the log!"

Two seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman. "Take
the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."