"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though
ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses;
speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of
all divers, thou has dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper
sun now gleams has moved amid the world's foundations. Where
unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot;
where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones
of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was
thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went;
has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers would give
their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when
leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the
exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.
Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight
deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw;
and his murderers still sailed on unharmed--while swift lightnings
shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband
to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the
planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!"
-- Herman Melville (1819-1891), "Moby Dick"
