“For long years,” writes Teufelsdrockh, “had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled¹, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force: For what? — Beym Himmel! For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable? — Come of it what might, I resolved to try.”

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward², laggard³ condition was painful enough, he desperately⁴ steers⁵ off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdrockh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed⁶ objects; above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual⁷ guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt⁸ thou sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter Northwest Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere? — A solitary⁹ rover, on such a voyage, with such nautical¹⁰ tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay¹¹, as we forthwith discover, a certain Calypso–Island detains him at the very outset; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning.

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