The Life Booy

The life booy was dropped from the stern where it always hung, obedient to a cunning spring. A long, slender cask had shrunken so that it slowly filled. The studded iron bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom as if to yield him his pillow,. Though in sooth, but a hard one. And thus the first man of the pequod that mounted the mast to look out for the wi whale on the white whale's own peculiar ground, that man was swallowed up in the deep.