‘But I am truly grateful to you, my dear,’ he said, ‘for having brought me to this proud perilous eminency, this quasi-apex, this apogee; you have indeed lifted my heart, in the spirit and in the flesh; and I am now resolved to mount up daily. I now despise the mizzentop, once my ultima Thule; and I even aspire to that knob up there,’ – nodding to the truck of the royal. ‘What an ape, or even I may say an obese post-captain can accomplish, that also I can do.’
