Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · Moby-Dick, ch. 29 · block 2

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. “It feels like going down into one’s tomb,”—he would mutter to himself,—“for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my grave-dug berth.”

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 ¶869: p. 138 (Scanned p. 138)
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Gloss address: 29.2 · chapter.paragraph · global ¶869
Frozen text and counting rules: g1-582503627a093f94.
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