.. < chapter xcvii 9  THE LAMP >

     Had you descended from the Pequod's
try-works to the Pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping,

     for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in
some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors.  There they lay in
their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of
lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.  In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is
more scarce than the milk of queens.  To dress in the dark, and eat in the
dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot.  But the

     whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light.  He makes his
berth an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest
night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.  See with what
entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps --often but old bottles
and vials, though --to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes
them there, as mugs of ale at a vat.  He burns, too, the purest of oil, in
its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to
solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore.  It is sweet as early grass
butter in April.  He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its
freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his
own supper of game.
..