Moby Dick

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soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot
somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest
uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through
for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their
wrists with all day rowing on the Line,--they only step to the deck to
carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea,
and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined
fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the
heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the
ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor
fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by
the cry of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale,
and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this
is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long
toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable
sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its
defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul;