Archive (Page 3) • Moby Dick • Buttondown

Chapter 95: The Cassock.

November 26, 2025

Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure...

Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand.

November 26, 2025

That whale of Stubb’s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the Pequod’s side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations previously detailed, were...

Chapter 93: The Castaway.

November 26, 2025

It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod’s crew; an event most...

Chapter 92: Ambergris.

November 26, 2025

Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined...

Chapter 91: The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.

November 26, 2025

“In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.” Sir T. Browne, V.E. It was a week or two...

Chapter 90: Heads or Tails.

November 26, 2025

“De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam.” Bracton, l. 3, c. 3. Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with...

Chapter 89: Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.

November 26, 2025

The allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one, necessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale fishery, of which the...

Chapter 88: Schools and Schoolmasters.

November 26, 2025

The previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those vast...

Chapter 87: The Grand Armada.

November 26, 2025

The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all Asia. In a...

Chapter 86: The Tail.

November 26, 2025

Other poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I celebrate a...

Chapter 85: The Fountain.

November 26, 2025

That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of ages before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and...

Chapter 84: Pitchpoling.

November 26, 2025

To make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are anointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an analogous operation upon...

Chapter 83: Jonah Historically Regarded.

November 26, 2025

Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story of...

Chapter 82: The Honor and Glory of Whaling.

November 26, 2025

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to...

Chapter 81: The Pequod Meets The Virgin.

November 26, 2025

The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen. At one time the greatest whaling people in the world,...

Chapter 80: The Nut.

November 26, 2025

If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square. In the full-...

Chapter 79: The Prairie.

November 26, 2025

To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken....

Chapter 78: Cistern and Buckets.

November 26, 2025

Nimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it...

Chapter 77: The Great Heidelburgh Tun.

November 26, 2025

Now comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must know something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated upon....

Chapter 76: The Battering-Ram.

November 26, 2025

Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale’s head, I would have you, as a sensible physiologist, simply—particularly remark its front aspect, in all its...