Herman Melville: Moby Dick

CHAPTER 7: The Chapel.

In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend to quote:--

SACRED
 TO THE MEMORY
 OF
 JOHN TALBOT,
 Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard,
 Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia,
 November 1st, 1836.
 THIS TABLET
 Is erected to his Memory
 BY HIS
 SISTER.
 _____________

SACRED
 TO THE MEMORY
 OF
 ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY,
 NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH MACY,
 AND SAMUEL GLEIG,
 Forming one of the boats' crews
 OF
 THE SHIP ELIZA
 Who were towed out of sight by a Whale,
 On the Off-shore Ground in the
 PACIFIC,
 December 31st, 1839.
 THIS MARBLE
 Is here placed by their surviving
 SHIPMATES.
 _____________

SACRED
 TO THE MEMORY
 OF
 The late
 CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY,
 Who in the bows of his boat was killed by a
 Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan,
 AUGUST 3d, 1833.
 THIS TABLET
 Is erected to his Memory
 BY
 HIS WIDOW.