Moby Dick

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of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and
wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the
heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and
you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning;
and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of
volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run
away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and
prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;
for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and
contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal
powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the
line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought
into actual play--this is a thing which carries more of true terror than
any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men
live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their