Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

All these things are not without their meanings.

 

[Old Thunder]

But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

 

[Old Thunder]

It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me.

 

[Old Thunder]

Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine.

 

[Old Thunder]

But somehow I grew merry again.

 

[Old Thunder]

Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems -- aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet.*

*Military promotion without higher pay and with limited exercise of rank.

 

[Old Thunder]

Yes, there is a death in this business of whaling -- a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity.

 

[Old Thunder]

But what then?

 

[Old Thunder]

Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.

 

[Old Thunder]

Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance.