The Life-Buoy — Moby-Dick

South-east by Ahab's level log and line, the Pequod sails calm equatorial waters that feel like prelude to riot. The ship passes unfrequented seas with monotonously mild trade-wind waves. Near rocky islets before dawn, Flask's watch hears a wild cry like Herod's murdered innocents. Christians whisper mermaids and shudder. Pagans stand firm. The grey Manxman hears newly drowned men.

Ahab laughs at grey dawn and says orphaned seal pups sobbed alongside the ship with human sort of wail. At sunrise a sailor climbs the fore mast-head on the White Whale's own ground and falls, a phantom in air, white bubbles below. The shrunken iron-bound life-buoy cask drops but fills and sinks with him like a hard pillow. Few think of the omen's meaning. Many read the death as evil already presaged, though the Manxman still says nay.

Starbuck must replace the buoy, but no light cask remains and all hands spurn side work in the fever of the approaching crisis. Queequeg hints his coffin with strange signs. Starbuck orders the carpenter to rig it, nail, caulk, pitch, and hang thirty Turk's-headed lines, while the old man grumbles that cobbling turns flesh to the other side and thirty men may fight for one box.