Moby Dick

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cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years' voyage
she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her--say, an empty vial
even--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her
skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether
relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.

Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very
ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here.
I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old
Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.
For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by
their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia,
or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great
stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread
gale of God's wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders
priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of
mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among