The Pequod Meets The Delight — Moby-Dick

The Pequod sails on, days rolling, Queequeg's life-buoy coffin still lightly swinging, until another ship most miserably misnamed the Delight appears with shattered white ribs of a whale-boat on her shears, visible as plainly as a peeled horse skeleton.

Ahab hails whether they have seen the White Whale; the hollow-cheeked captain points with his trumpet to the wreck and says no harpoon is yet forged that will kill him, glancing sadly at a rounded hammock sailors are sewing on deck. Ahab snatches Perth's leveled iron from the crotch and swears he holds Moby Dick's death, tempered in blood and lightning, to temper triply behind the fin.

The Delight captain bids God keep the old man, points at the hammock where he buries but one of five stout men alive only yesterday, dead ere night, the rest buried before they died: you sail upon their tomb. As he advances toward resurrection words, Ahab cries brace forward and up helm; the Pequod is not quick enough to escape the corpse splash or ghostly baptism on her hull.

Gliding from the dejected Delight, Ahab leaves the strange life-buoy coffin at the Pequod's stern in conspicuous relief while a foreboding voice cries that strangers fly the sad burial only to show their coffin on the taffrail.