Ahab

I am familiar with Ahab, too familiar. I stride back and forth of nights upon the deck and meditate upon that Great Leviathan that tasks me, that tasks us all; a dynamo of nature, so vast and so powerful that it seems a universe unto itself within the small encompass of its brain.
I look upon it as John Brown gazed upon that fearful savage sun of Slavery, which drove him dessicate upon the moral deserts of his times and dried his emotions to a tough and stringy pemmican too leathery for any but supernatural nurture.
The harpoons stand from its enormous back like a forest of cometary iron, forged first by cave dwellers and beat continuously by modern ferriers, blackened firs burned by tears and rage upon that cetacean back.
When the Great White breaches, all the birds upon the sea scatter, and we smell the odor of far away lands, foreign seas and exotic shores where the beast has laid its oceanic claims of Empire!

O, Lord! Canst Thou fill his skin with barbed irons? Or his head with fish spears? Teach my hands wise in the ways of harpoon'ry, make my mates courageous, and let our loggerheads leap fire and our drougues be heavy. Let us measure that whale, enough its head, enough its tail; how many spans its longitude, how many spans lateral! Let it be distributed! Let us live to see our loved ones again!

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notes

I see a vibrant connexion between Captain Ahab and John Brown. The monster faced by Brown was Slavery, and Ahab faced a ferocious metaphor.

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