Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

"Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar.

 

[Old Thunder]

"See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?

 

[Old Thunder]

"Miserable man!

 

[Old Thunder]

"Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas.

 

[Old Thunder]

"So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck.

 

[Old Thunder]

"How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag, -- no friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux.

 

[Old Thunder]

"At last, after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye.

 

[Old Thunder]

"Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile.

 

[Old Thunder]

"Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent.

 

[Old Thunder]

"In their gruesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other -- 'Jack, he's robbed a widow;' or, 'Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;', or, 'Harry lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom.'