Freemason’s Lodge

Architecture

For did ye three but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, that had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there—yon three most honourable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooners.

As I hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port. Board the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor. The next command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes. Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him.