The Mast-Head — Moby-Dick

In pleasant weather Ishmael's first mast-head turn arrives, and on American whalemen the lookouts stand from the day the ship leaves port until skysail-poles sail among home spires, even when only an empty vial remains to fill; before confessing his own failure he essays the ancient business from Egyptian pyramid astronomers and Saint Stylites on his pillar to stone Napoleons and Washingtons who cannot answer a hail from the decks below, then Nantucket spars and the three mast-heads manned sunrise to sunset on thin t' gallant cross-trees while Greenland's Captain Sleet boasts a snug crow's-nest with compass, trumpet rack, and a case-bottle he forgets to mention.

Southern fishers trade that shelter for seductive tropic seas where a hundred feet above silent decks you stride the deep until languor resolves you into opium-like vacancy; Ishmael makes a clean breast of it and admits he kept but sorry guard, lounging to chat with Queequeg while the universe revolved in him and lightly holding the standing order to keep weather eye open and sing out every time, then admonishes Nantucket owners to beware hollow-eyed youths who ship with the Phaedon in their heads instead of Bowditch, for whales must be seen before they can be killed and romantic Platonists will tow ten wakes round the world without one pint of sperm.

At thought-engendering altitude waves blend with thoughts until every dim fin seems an elusive idea and the soul ebbs pantheistic as Cranmer's ashes, yet one inch of slipped hold restores identity in horror and may drop the dreamer through transparent air into the summer sea with a half-throttled shriek: when your post is watch, will you heed gravity before philosophy, ye Pantheists?