Delighting in Your storm

I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink then of what they are dancing over. I’ll dance over your grave, I will -- that’s the bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole world’s one ball, as your scholars have it, and so ‘tis to make one ball-room of it. Dance on, lads, you’re young. I once once.

- Manx sailor observing merriment aboard the Pequod during a storm in Melville’s Moby Dick

It’s the waves’ -- the snowcaps’ turn to jig it now. They’ll shake their tassels soon. Now would all the waves were women, then I’d go drown, and chassee with them evermore!! There’s naught so sweet on earth -- heaven may not match it! --- as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.

-- Maltese sailor in the same scene in Moby Dick