"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!"
He dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,—"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him—a far, far upward, and inward delight—who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,—top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath—O Father!—chiefly known to me by Thy rod—mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the place.
Returning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in his heathenish way.
But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth page—as I fancied—stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.
Nelson Mandela was born into a royal family of the Xhosa nation, one of the largest ethnic groups in South Africa. Xhosa young men, such as those in this photograph, undergo a rite of initiation that involves isolation from their families during which they receive instruction by elder men, followed by circumcision, which continues to be practiced in many parts of central and southern Africa. Initiates are thereafter considered to be adult men. Mandela recalled his initiation in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.
In this September 15, 1990, photo, the burning body of a man identified as a Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party supporter is clubbed by followers of the rival African National Congress during factional violence in Soweto, South Africa.
Winnie Mandela, wife of Nelson Mandela, raises a clenched fist after appearing at a Johannesburg magistrate's court in December 1986. Mrs. Mandela had been held by police in Soweto the previous day for defying an order banning her presence there.
Nelson Mandela's former prison cell (cell 5 in B-section in the political prisoners area) on Robben Island, off Cape Town. Conditions were spartan in the tiny cell; the bed was a mat on the floor. For years after he was released, even when he was President of South Africa, Mandela continued to make his own bed each morning, as he did in prison.
With much of the world watching on television, Nelson Mandela and wife Winnie walk hand in hand and raise clenched fists upon his release from Victor prison, Cape Town, on Sunday, February 11, 1990.
Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd of about 15,000 from the balcony of Amsterdam's city theater on June 16, 1990. On the left, seen from the back, is his wife Winnie. Then the deputy president of the African National Congress, Mandela was on a 13-nation, six-week Freedom Tour to thank international supporters of the anti-apartheid movement and appeal to the global community to maintain their sanctions against South Africa.
On the fourth anniversary of his release, Nelson Mandela looks out the window of his former cell in Robben Island Prison. He was held as a political prisoner by the apartheid-based government from 1964 to 1990. The cell has been preserved and has become a popular destination for tourists.
Lines of people wait in the dawn light to vote in the election that resulted in Nelson Mandela's election as President of South Africa. The three-day voting period, April 26-29, 1994, marked the first time that adult South Africans of all races could vote for representatives to the national Parliament and provincial legislatures. The African National Congress won by a landslide, and April 27, Freedom Day, is now a public holiday.
South Africans partied through the night when the official results of the April 1994 election were released, after Mandela and other party leaders had spent hours behind closed doors reviewing allegations of fraud and other issues. But there was no doubting the result: More than 60 percent of the votes had been cast for the African National Congress, and Nelson Mandela was the President-elect of a new democratic South Africa.
In this 2007 photo, former South African President Nelson Mandela reacts as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, waves farewell after a meeting at the Nelson Mandela Foundation building in Johannesburg.
