Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

"Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat.

 

[Old Thunder]

"And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep.

 

[Old Thunder]

"Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul.

 

[Old Thunder]

"In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known.

 

[Old Thunder]

"The sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them.

 

[Old Thunder]

"The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their questions.

 

[Old Thunder]

"'What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people?'

 

[Old Thunder]

"But mark now, my shipmates, the behaviour of poor Jonah.

 

[Old Thunder]

"The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.

 

[Old Thunder]

"'I am a Hebrew,' he cries -- and then -- 'I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!'