He is satisfied. Later on, he’ll have his hero say: “I don’t see much: nothing but water for a long stretch.” And Peleg replies: “Well now, what do you think of your idea of seeing the world? Do you still want to round Cape Horn to see nothing but this? The whole world is right where you stand. There isn’t any other.”

Yes, the world is nothing but what we make of it. And then, there’s what it gives back to us. Friendship and love are feelings without bounds. You can love vast beings, like the mountains or the sea, with the same kind of love you feel for a woman, and the same kind of friendship you feel for a man. And you can be loved by these beings in return. This is our blessing. In the darkest depths of our confusion and disorder, this certainty remains. Even when it’s the only certainty we have left, it’s enough to make us feel our own grandeur. No one knows this better than Herman. In the fullness of time, drawing on memory (that ocean stretched to limitless horizons), he’ll write this sanctuary book, in which humanity can harbor its despair and its desire to persist in spite of the gods.

But the fullness of time has yet to come. He’s gliding slowly through the long, sinuous swells of the South Seas. Every now and then he comes a bit closer to being face-to-face with the ocean. He starts out wary and dazzled. What gets to him right away is that monstrous web of tricks and charms. If, at the moment, he were playing a game à la Stevenson, he’d never get to know the high seas as anything but a kind of cordial syrup. But the Acushnet isn’t a yacht. It’s a whaler. And Captain Pease hunts for whales. And while he hunts, he doles out slaps and kicks in the rear. Thousands of times, in a sort of perfect, gigantic, arithmetical progression, he’ll blaspheme the name of God with curses that become more and more outrageous and original. He careens around among the sailors like the ball in a game of skittles. Beyond a doubt, he has been created and brought into this world for no other reason than to act as an agent of destruction. He’s the sledgehammer, the truncheon, the war club, and the cesspool of the Lord.

Herman grows emaciated. He wastes away. Maybe, after all, nothing has really affected him, except for this sort of roving kick in the rear that radiates out all the time from the captain, like a shaft of sunlight. Something unimportant and not aimed at him in particular. Besides, Herman takes a philosophical view of kicks in the rear: He couldn’t care less. Even so, the work wears him down. It beats him up and it toughens his skin. Even though the air here is free, and he can expand his lungs to the full, the skin of his belly shrivels up like an old leather boot. Ah! When, by chance, he has a moment to look himself over from head to foot, he discovers that Mr. Herman of the State Bank has undergone a few small transformations! The first time he was able to wash himself from top to toe, the sponge dropped out of his hand. There’s nothing left of him but his formidable shoulders. Right under their blades, you can see his lungs expand and contract. But he could circle his belly with his own two hands, and his thighs are attached to his hips like wooden puppets’ thighs—just awkwardly tacked on. It’s almost as if you could see the dowels and the rubber bands inside. If he only realized how much his eyes have changed! You can’t look straight into them anymore. Or if you do, it’s at your own peril. Poor Miss Valentine! You should pray to God that you never run into the “Squaller” again. Because, if he were standing in front of you now, he’d be your lord and master. And you’d be stammering words of a different sort, madly.