Ahab paces binnacle to mainmast, javelin gaze on the compass needle, nailed firmness on the Ecuador doubloon sanctified as White Whale talisman, virgin Quito gold showing Andes peaks, flame, tower, cock, and zodiac sun entering Libra at the equator; one morning he reads the stamp monomaniacally, every peak Ahab, the coin a magician's glass mirroring each man's mystery, storm sign to storm sign born for pangs.
Starbuck sees Belshazzar claws and a dark Trinity vale with righteousness sun he dare not trust; Stubb spins zodiac as one life chapter from Ram begetting through Crab drag, marriage, scales, scorpion sting, deluge, to Pisces sleep, jolly almanack sermon; Flask counts sixteen dollars and nine hundred sixty cigars; the Manxman hears horseshoe opposite mast and Copenhagen witch-signs for lion month; Queequeg maps tattoos and calls the coin a trouser button; Fedallah bows fire-worship; Pip chants Murray's persons then bats, crows, and scarecrow Ahab.
Ishmael names the coin the ship's navel everyone burns to unscrew, nailed desperation, green miser hoarding while cooks are hailed and Jenny's hoe-cake waits, each interpreter's sermon diverging from the same round gold.
No thief touches the coin through night watches because purpose sanctifies it, yet each reader's soliloquy proves Melville's wager that significance lurks in all things or the round world is cartload filler; Ahab's storm-born pangs, Starbuck's frightened piety, Stubb's jesting fatalism, and Pip's grammar of looking collide on one nail while Ishmael watches the ship's omphalos burn.
