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The rebellious crew's experiences in the Society Islands are quite as realistic as events on board ship and very entertaining, while the whimsical character, Dr. Long Ghost, next to Captain Ahab in 'Moby Dick, is Melville's most striking delineation.

"Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward to the attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven.

Moby reproachfully, "there'll be murder, and then trouble to follow: the Master is not one to put up with cruelty to any dog. Bless the man you're gettin' like a mad thing. Leave the dog alone, I tell yer." Seth had taken off his boots, and flung them at the dog before going up to bed: Mrs. Moby had been engaged trying to disconcert his aim.

But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship, which thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the present her headway had been stopped.

In those newspapers short of copy, you saw the reappearance of every gigantic imaginary creature, from "Moby Dick," that dreadful white whale from the High Arctic regions, to the stupendous kraken whose tentacles could entwine a 500-ton craft and drag it into the ocean depths.

I did turn to Oscar Fujisawa with a quotation I remembered from Moby Dick, the book he'd named his ship from. "How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee, even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab?" I asked. "It will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market." He looked at me angrily and started to say something. Then he shrugged. "I know, Walt," he said.

So that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long practised Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring warfare; such men protesting that although other leviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man.

Murphy looked puzzled, and crept into a corner. "Don't carry on like that, Seth; don't do it, man. The dog's a poor, nervous little thing with we, and don't mean to do no hurt." But it was of no avail. Seth Moby looked upon Murphy as an interloper, and when he could do anything to frighten him he did, and by any brutal means in his power.

Granting that the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common, daily appetites.

Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on board, on board! lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine.