“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 —