Moby Dick by Herman Melville (readera ebook reader .txt) ๐
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โCall me Ishmaelโ says Moby Dickโs protagonist, and with this famous first line launches one of the acclaimed great American novels. Part adventure story, part quest for vengeance, part biological textbook and part whaling manual, Moby Dick was first published in 1851. The story follows Ishmael as he abandons his humdrum life on shore for an adventure on the waves. Finding the whaler Pequod at harbour in Nantucket, he signs up for a three year term without meeting the Captain of the ship, a mysterious figure called Ahab. It is only well into the voyage that Ahabโs thirst for vengeance against the eponymous white whale Moby Dickโand the consequencesโbecome clear.
The novel is semi-autobiographical: Herman Melville had had his own experience of whaling, having spent a year and a half aboard a whaling ship and further years travelling the world in the early 1840s. Herman used the knowledge gained from his experiences and wide reading on the subject to furnish Moby Dick with an almost encyclopaedic quality at times. The literary style varies widely, veering from soliloquies and staged scenes to dream sequences to comprehensive lists of ships provisions, but everything serves to further detail the world thatโs being painted.
Presented here is the New York edition, which was published later than the London edition and reverted numerous changes the original publishers had made, as well as including the initially omitted epilogue.
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- Author: Herman Melville
Read book online ยซMoby Dick by Herman Melville (readera ebook reader .txt) ๐ยป. Author - Herman Melville
Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.
XXIX Enter Ahab; To Him, StubbSome days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped upโ โflaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, โtwas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahabโs texture.
Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. โIt feels like going down into oneโs tomb,โโ โhe would mutter to himselfโ โโfor an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth.โ
So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarterdeck; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the old second mate, came up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then.
โAm I a cannonball, Stubb,โ said Ahab, โthat thou wouldst wad me that fashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.โ โDown, dog, and kennel!โ
Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, โI am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir.โ
โAvast!โ gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation.
โNo, sir; not yet,โ said Stubb, emboldened, โI will not tamely be called a dog, sir.โ
โThen be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone, or Iโll clear the world of thee!โ
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
โI was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,โ muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. โItโs very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I donโt well know whether to go back and strike him, orโ โwhatโs that?โ โdown here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. Itโs queer; very queer; and heโs queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, heโs about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!โ โhis eyes like powder-pans! is he mad? Anyway thereโs something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He ainโt in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he donโt sleep then. Didnโt that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old manโs hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets
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