1 The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.
2 But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not.
3 Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us.
4 No, I don't," said the captain, "but his mother did; he was born with it.
5 Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old.
6 Probably the mother during an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale's Head—Contrasted View. 7 Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down.
8 When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter's lance, the mother's pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods.
9 For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers.
10 One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb.