Moby Dick

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with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom,
and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread
them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating himself before
it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines and
shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady pencil trace
additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he
would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein were set down
the seasons and places in which, on various former voyages of various
ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen.

While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his
head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw
shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it
almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses
on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and
courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.