The Albatross — Moby-Dick

South-east of the Cape Ishmael watches from the fore-mast head as a sail looms out of the Crozetts, and for a tyro the sight is uncanny: the Goney, or Albatross, bleached like a stranded walrus skeleton, rust channeling down her sides, rigging furred with hoar-frost, long-bearded lookouts in beast-skin patches after nearly four years at sea who pass within leaping distance of the Pequod's mast-heads without a word while the quarter-deck hail rises below.

Have ye seen the White Whale? The stranger captain lifts his speaking trumpet to answer and it slips into the sea as the wind rises; he vanishes unheard while the Pequod treats the drop as an omen and Ahab almost sends a boat but weather forbids, then hails again that mail must follow them round the world to the Pacific for three years. As the wakes cross, harmless fish that had been placidly swimming beside the Pequod dart to the stranger's flanks, and Ahab murmurs Swim away from me, do ye? with a helpless sadness rarer than his rage before ordering the helm kept off round the world.

Ishmael reflects that circumnavigation sounds proud but only runs through numberless perils back to where you started, while those who stayed home were ahead all along and the demon phantom may drown you midway: when you finally stand near someone who survived the road you are on, will you ask anything besides the name of your enemy?