Moby Dick

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blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the
swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in
the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the
whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the
log--SHOALS, ROCKS, AND BREAKERS HEREABOUTS: BEWARE! And for years
afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly
sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there
when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's your
utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of
old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in
the air! There's orthodoxy!

Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror
to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a
world.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than