Hur obed, the Phoenician sailors called it: hole of perdition . . .
Charybdis.
And on the second voyage, Columbus, sailing along the southern coast of Cuba, suddenly “entered a white sea, which was as white as milk, and as thick as the water in which tanners treat their skins.” The colors changed—white, green, crystal-clear, to black—and the men recalled old Arabic tales of the Green Sea of Gloom, and endless shoals that fringed the edge of the world.
“. . . there was no room to shoot up into the wind and anchor; nor was there holding ground . . .”
Carib Charybdis—such, perhaps, as Hart Crane—the ocean already in his head—leaped into . . .
First voyage, return: “All night they were beating to windward, and going as near as they could, so as to see some way to the island at sunrise. That night the Admiral got a little rest, for he had not slept nor been able to sleep since Wednesday, and he had lost the use of his legs from long exposure to the wet and cold.”
And elsewhere, contending with cannibals: “The barbarians, being only three men with two women and a single Indian captive . . . persevered in seeking safety by swimming, in which art they are skilful. At last they were captured and taken to the Admiral. One of them was pierced through in seven places and his intestines protruded from his wounds. Since it was believed that he could not be healed, he was thrown into the sea. But emerging to the surface, with one foot upraised, and with his left hand holding his intestines in their place, he swam courageously towards the shore. This caused great alarm to the Indians who were brought along as interpreters . . . The Cannibal was therefore recaptured near the shore, bound hand and foot more tightly, and again thrown headlong into the sea. This resolute barbarian swam still more eagerly towards the shore, till, transpierced with many arrows, he at length expired.”
Reaching Portugal, “. . . they were told that such a winter, with as many storms, had never before been known, and that 25 ships had been lost in Flanders . . .”
And on Española, at Navidad, a few Spaniards had been left behind, the first colonists: “These, fighting bravely to the last, when they could no longer withstand the attack of the thronged battalions of their foes, were at length cut to pieces. The information conveyed . . . was confirmed by the discovery of the dead bodies of ten Spaniards. These bodies were emaciated and ghastly, covered with dust and bespattered with blood, discoloured, and retaining still a fierce aspect. They had lain now nearly three months neglected and unburied under the open air.”
MOBY-DICK: “At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance—as the whale sometimes will—and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled round his great Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise . . .”
(Melville, elsewhere: “. . . since all human affairs are subject to organic disorder, since they are created in and sustained by a sort of half-disciplined chaos, hence he who in great things seeks success must never wait for smooth water, which never was and never will be, but, with what straggling method he can, dash with all his derangements at his object . . .”
“. . . he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the whale.”
The medical book: “Once within the periphery of the ovum the sperm’s head and neck detach from its tail which may be left wholly outside and in no case plays any part in the events to follow. The head next rotates 180° and proceeds toward the centre of the egg where the egg nucleus, having finished the maturative divisions, awaits it. During this journey the sperm head enlarges, becomes open-structured, and is converted into the male pronucleus.”
The head enlarges, becomes open-structured . . . I tilt forward, the front legs of the chair striking the floor, and then turn to face the far end, the western end of the attic . . . turning, then, completely around, I face the desk again, and become dizzy . . .
MOBY-DICK: “And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.”
(Melville, elsewhere: “. . . in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;—nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”
To Hawthorne: “The Whale is completed.”