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Now , with elated step , they pace the planks in twos and threes , and humorously discourse of parlors , sofas , carpets , and fine cambrics ; propose to mat the deck ; think of having hanging to the top ; object not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle . To hint to such musked mariners of oil , and bone , and blubber , were little short of audacity . They know not the thing you distantly allude to . Away , and bring us napkins ! But mark : aloft there , at the three mast heads , stand three men intent on spying out more whales , which , if caught , infallibly will again soil the old oaken furniture , and drop at least one small grease - spot somewhere . Yes ; and many is the time , when , after the severest uninterrupted labors , which know no night ; continuing straight through for ninety - six hours ; when from the boat , where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line , — they only step to the deck to carry vast chains , and heave the heavy windlass , and cut and slash , yea , and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try - works ; when , on the heel of all this , they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship , and make a spotless dairy room of it ; many is the time the poor fellows , just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks , are startled by the cry of “ There she blows ! ” and away they fly to fight another whale , and go through the whole weary thing again . Oh ! my friends , but this is man - killing ! Yet this is life . For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its small but valuable sperm ; and then , with weary patience , cleansed ourselves from its defilements , and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul ; hardly is this done , when — There she blows ! — the ghost is spouted up , and away we sail to fight some other world , and go through young life’s old routine again . Oh ! the metempsychosis ! Oh ! Pythagoras , that in bright Greece , two thousand years ago , did die , so good , so wise , so mild ; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage — and , foolish as I am , taught thee , a green simple boy , how to splice a rope ! CHAPTER 99 . The Doubloon . Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter - deck , taking regular turns at either limit , the binnacle and mainmast ; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been added how that sometimes in these walks , when most plunged in his mood , he was wont to pause in turn at each spot , and stand there strangely eyeing the particular object before him . When he halted before the binnacle , with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass , that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose ; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast , then , as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there , he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness , only dashed with a certain wild longing , if not hopefulness .
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