I struck my first whale — a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty — forty — forty years ago! — ago! Forty years of continual whaling!

Forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! Forty years on the pitiless sea! For forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain’s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without — oh, weariness! Heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!

— when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before —