“threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.”
Where, then, will he be — and when?
Mark the ground upon the chart; name the month; fix the mark.
“God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.”
Moby-Dick, Ch. 44, “The Chart”
a paper prototype from the lower decks · the unreasoning mask · verified against the 1851 text
The Chart
a Lower Decks toy · reconstruct the reasoning
Night after night the captain sits over his yellowed charts, threading currents and seasons. The horror of the chapter is not that his method is mad. It is that it is not.
Credit what is sound in the log-slates; strike what is not. A credited sighting drops a pin. Thread the pins two at a time along the veins of the sea — the months must answer. When the web holds, say where he will be, and when.
By these marks and no others: a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; three holes punctured in his starboard fluke.