Moby Dick

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Nantucket captains will send a son of such tender age away from them,
for a protracted three or four years' voyage in some other ship than
their own; so that their first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall
be unenervated by any chance display of a father's natural but untimely
partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and concern.

Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of Ahab;
and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without
the least quivering of his own.

"I will not go," said the stranger, "till you say aye to me. Do to me
as you would have me do to you in the like case. For YOU too have a boy,
Captain Ahab--though but a child, and nestling safely at home now--a
child of your old age too--Yes, yes, you relent; I see it--run, run,
men, now, and stand by to square in the yards."

"Avast," cried Ahab--"touch not a rope-yarn"; then in a voice that