[interior]
Q: How will Moby Dick fit in here?
A: One Line at a Time
Q: I don’t follow
A: Well we will need to do Mathematics
Q: How do you figure?
A: Look at thy numbers. The window (plexi) is 31 ¾ x 19 ½ inches. This is what is visible from the outside. The interior dimensions are 34 ¾ x 22 ¾ inches. Methinks 1 ⅜ inches deep?
Q: And the paper? How many sheets of white will fill the visible height… 31 and a half inches thy say?
A: Aye. Halter informed me that the paper stacks approximately 200 sheets per inch.
Q: So 200 multiplied by 31 ½ inches?
A: Give or take.
Q: So Moby Dick will be 6,251 pages long? My God.
A: Tis a novel so it will need to be printed front and back as all novels are. So 12,502 pages.
Q: And what about the source material?
A: Melville wrote but 212,525 words in total
Q: How many of those words will constitute one line of text per page?
A: Tis but an easy division problem. 212,525 by 12,502.
Q: 17?
A: Aye, aye.
Q: So each page will fit betwixt the plexi and the walls of the case? What does that work out to be?
A: A page will be one inch by 18 inches. That’ll do.
Q: And there will be 12,502 of them?
A: Aye
Q: [but granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not but a mad idea] Captain you have lost me with this Book Maths.
A: Worry not. Tis only I that can cast down that white devil. Time, time; if I but only had the time, I could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever (sneezes).
Q: But it will be submerged and locked beneath the glass? For only god, - Fejee god or Nantucket god, - shall see what lies beneath.
A: You cannot but plainly see that I will keep my word. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught.
Q: Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
A: Moby Dick is there. One Line at a Time.
