Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · Moby-Dick, ch. 54 · block 5

“Some two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days’ sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and…

Herman Melville · 1851
Project Gutenberg #15, credited to Eugene F. Irey; updated 10 June 2026. Based on the first American edition, Harper & Brothers, 1851, according to the source catalog.
Mapped print edition: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851; First American edition).
Passage ¶1350: pp. 270–271 (Scanned p. 270 · Scanned p. 271)
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Locations cover whole source blocks in chapters 1–135 and the epilogue, plus the title leaf. The reading text remains Project Gutenberg #15 and can differ from this printing; consult the linked scan when quoting the print edition. The 23 source-note references have their own mapped pages. Front matter beyond the title, one decorative break, and the modern transcriber’s note are not mapped. Bracketed labels [i] and [635] are supplied for unnumbered leaves. Alignment does not certify verbatim identity.
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Gloss address: 54.4 · chapter.paragraph · global ¶1350
Frozen text and counting rules: g1-582503627a093f94.
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