Does the damned fool want to be blown up? Well, blow him up then. Give him hell, Captain Morton- as hot as you've got it, too.

You talk very easily of hours, sir! How long do you suppose, sir, that an hour is to a man who is choking for want of air?

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

It was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly an abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The man felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still —

The hook is in deep boys, there is no more time. So you can struggle in the water and be too stubborn to die, or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky.

Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home!

He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he is sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their blood in history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him? (p.147)

We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?

A man can suffocate on courtesy.