Another quote from Moby Dick

"Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe."

On the length of whale cruises: "While other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves"

Provisioning of Dutch whale-boats: "we have precisely to barrels of beer per man for twelve weeks allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 anklers of gin. now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as noe might fancy in a boat's head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat improbable. yet they did aim at them, and hit them too."

While drinking heavily one night when a gale came up, whalemen off Patagonia were called to reef topsails. "we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars"