Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars — Moby-Dick

On Tower-hill near the London docks a crippled beggar, a kedger in sailors' talk, has held up the same painted board for ten years: three whales, three boats, and one jaw crushing the boat that took his leg. Ishmael says the man's time of justification has come. His whales are as good as anything published in Wapping, and his stump is as real as any in the western clearings. Still he never makes a stump-speech. He only stares down at the missing leg with rueful eyes while passers-by finally believe what the picture always showed.

From that street scene Ishmael walks the whole world whalemen remake in their off hours. Pacific and Nantucket forecastles fill with scrimshaw on teeth and ladies' busks, carved with jack-knife patience that rivals Hawaiian war-clubs or the shield of Achilles. Whale shapes hang as brass tail knockers, spin as sheet-iron weathercocks too high to judge, and rise in cliff masses that look like petrified Leviathans when the wind breaks green surf against the stone. Only a thorough whaleman sees a whale profile in a mountain ridge, and he must note the exact latitude and longitude or the illusion may never return.

Ishmael calls himself a savage loyal to the King of the Cannibals, then looks up and chases Leviathan round the Pole and through the constellations until he wishes he could ride a whale into the sky. The hunt leaks into every medium when it owns you. What is your crew carving, joking, or seeing in plain objects when the official story says the work stays at the desk?