For fifteen months, since he went to sea, he’s been wrestling with an angel. Like Jacob, he’s plunged in darkness, and no dawn comes. Wings—unbearably rigid—beat him, raise him up above the earth, hurl him back down, snatch him up again, and smother him. He hasn’t had a moment’s respite from the fight. No matter if he’s reached his limit; no matter if he’s completely worn out; no matter if he sinks like a stone into his berth: He wrestles with the angel. If he’s leaping into the whaleboat; if he’s riding out an iron-gray tempest; if he’s staring into the sickening maw of one of the giant creatures of the abyss: At the very same time, he wrestles with the angel. If he’s on watch; if he’s trimming the sails; if he’s up in the rigging; if he’s rendering oil; if he’s stoking the fire; if he’s standing right inside the charnel house of the Leviathan’s entrails: He wrestles with the angel. And when the doldrums weigh like lead over thousands of nautical miles; when all earthly powers are asleep; when even Captain Pease has collapsed with fatigue: He, Herman, wrestles with this dreadful angel who, by doing battle, illuminates the impenetrable mystery of the intercourse between humans and the gods. It’s inside of this mystery that his eyes have sight. It’s here that they fill with images. It’s here that they become tinged with bitterness and tenderness. Stripped to the bone, on the strength of nothing more than the spirit that emanates from his eyes, he could count himself richer than all the emperors and kings of the world put together. He’d already made the decision, but now he’ll never bow to worldly laws again.

At last the ship makes the Marquesas and tacks in toward Nuku Hiva. It enters the port and ties up. Without further ado, Herman deserts. He takes off with a shipmate named Richard T. Greene. In the evening, they go down into the ship’s storeroom and fill their pockets with sea biscuits. Next, barefoot, in the dark: the gangplank. Then, right away, the blistering beach and the night . . . a southern night, all green with starlight.

This is not a matter of him running away. Don’t imagine for a moment that he was the least bit affected by the captain’s kicks in the rear. When you come right down to it, Pease is nothing more than a kind of Protestant Hercules. To be even more precise, Pease isn’t out for human flesh. He fuels himself with Quaker oats, which smell like shaving soap. He’s only cruel when it comes to money. If he doles out whacks with unconcealed glee, it’s because each slap that makes a sailor hop to it more smartly can be translated into dollars and cents. Ten slaps shave almost ten cents’ worth of time off the cutting-in of a whale, and thirty whiplashes save almost a dollar. He lashes out the way another man cuts back on his expenses. It’s true that, at its logical conclusion, all of this helps stock up Miss Valentine’s larder.