Moby Dick

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as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would
not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time of
general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which
his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those
summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his
thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and
cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely
the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking; quite the
contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and closely wrapped
up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified
Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come,
and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like
a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well
in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet
lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted
through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a
telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for