already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. ere that come to pass; ere the pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow.