"Here now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!"
Musing: Ahab is still thinking of the coffin becoming a life-buoy. And as the novel comes closer to its conclusion, the universal questions of life and death become stronger and bigger and as overwhelming as the ocean itself. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Melville said earlier in Moby-Dick. Umm - yeah.