"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though

ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,

mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers,

thou has dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has

moved amid the world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust,

and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate

earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful

water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or

diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers

would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when

leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting

wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the

murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell

into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed

on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would

have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has

seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one

syllable is thine!"

-- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"