 treacherous, slavish shore?
    But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless,
indefinite as God - so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be
ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then,
oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony
so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up
from the spray of thy ocean-perishing - straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!
 

                                  Chapter XXIV

                                  The Advocate

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as
this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a
rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to
convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.
    In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the
fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a
level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were
introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly
advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a
harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the
initials S. W. F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure
would be deemed preeminently presuming and ridiculous.
    Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honouring us whalemen is
this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of
business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all
manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and
butchers of the bloodiest badge, have been all Martial Commanders whom the world
invariably delights to honour. And as for the matter of the alleged
uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts
hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly
plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy
earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered
slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of
those battlefields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies'
plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the
soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely
marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil
