Moby Dick

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(AHAB TO HIMSELF.)

"There's a sight! There's a sound! The grey-headed woodpecker tapping
the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that
thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag,
that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all
materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here
now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made
the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life.
A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some
spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!
I'll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth,
that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain
twilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed
sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return
again. Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous
philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds