as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastedly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

On the sea he wished to meet it, if meet it he must. He was not sure why this was, yet he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land. Out of the sea there rise storms and monsters, but no evil powers: evil is of earth. And there is no sea, no running of river or spring, in the dark land where once Ged had gone. Death is the dry place.

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment’s consideration will teach that, however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

Wee leave Creete Country; and our sayls unwrapped uphoysing,
With woodden vessel thee rough seas deepelye we furrowe.
When we fro land harbours too mayne seas gyddye dyd enter
Voyded of al coast sight with wild fluds roundly bebayed,
A watrye clowd gloomming, ful above mee clampred, apeered,
A sharp storme menacing, from sight beams soonye rejecting:
Thee flaws with rumbling, thee wroght fluds angrye doe jumble:
Up swel thee surges, in chauffe sea plasshye we tumble:
With the rayn, is daylight through darcknesse mostye bewrapped,
And thundring lightbolts from torneclowds fyrye be flasshing.
Wee doe mis oure passadge through fel fluds boysterus erring,
Oure pilot eke, Palinure, through dymnesse clowdye bedusked
In poinccts of coompasse dooth stray with palpabil erroure.
Three dayes in darcknesse from bright beams soony repealed,
And three nights parted from lightning starrye we wandered,
The fourth day foloing thee shoare, neere setled, apeered
And hils uppeaking; and smoak swift steamed to the skyward.
Oure sayls are strucken, we roa Furth with speedines hastye,
And the sea by our mariners with the oars cleene canted is harrowd
On shoars of strophades from storme escaped I landed,
For those plats Strophades in languadge Greekish ar highted,
With the sea coucht Islands. Where foule bird foggye Celaeno
And Harpy is nestled: sence franckling Phines his housroume
From theym was sunderd, and fragments plentye remooved.
No plage more perilous, no monster grislye more ouglye,
No stigian vengaunce lyke too theese carmoran haggards.
Theese fouls lyke maydens are pynde with phisnomye palish;
With ramd cramd garbadge, thire gorges draftye be gulled,
With tallants prowling, theire face wan withred in hunger,
With famin upsoaken.

I am a shipwrecked man who fears every sea.