The Funeral — Moby-Dick

The work is done. The crew shouts to haul in the chains and let the carcase go astern. The huge stripped body of the beheaded whale drifts away. It shines white like a marble tomb. It has lost its blubber, but it is still enormous.

Slowly it floats farther from the ship. Sharks tear at the water around it. Screaming seabirds fill the air. Their beaks stab the whale like knives. The headless white shape drifts on and on. More sharks and birds join the feast. The noise grows louder.

For hours the Pequod stays nearly still while the crew watches this awful sight. Under a clear blue sky, on a calm pleasant sea, with gentle breezes blowing, the great dead mass floats away until it disappears in the distance.

Ishmael calls it a sad and mocking funeral. The sea birds act like mourners in black. In life, few of them would have helped the whale. Now they rush to the feast with fake piety. Ishmael says this horrible scavenger hunger reaches even the mightiest whale.

But that is not the end. Even after the body is torn apart, a vengeful ghost seems to hover over it. A timid ship far away sees the white mass floating in the sun. The officer writes in the log: shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts, beware! For years afterward, ships avoid the place. They steer around it like silly sheep jumping over nothing, because one frightened report said danger was there.

In life the great whale terrified his enemies. In death his ghost scares the world even though the body is harmless. Ishmael ends by asking if you believe in ghosts. He says there are other ghosts than the famous ones, and wiser men than Doctor Johnson believe in them too.