"So strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads."
Musing: If that last line doesn't take your breath away I am not sure what will. Ishmael is helping Queequeq weave a mat. He is also helping, it seems, to weave together his own fate to the fates of the other men on board the Pequod. It's a sobering thought - that our actions somehow lead toward our fate, though we prefer to think of fate as random.