Moby Dick

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together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will
not be very long in following.

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same
he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem
now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like
placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the
other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident
against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not
this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in
facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm
Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.



CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.