Sentence No. 57 · 23 May 2026
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Herman Melville — Moby-Dick (1851) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The two em-dashes around "never mind how long precisely" signal a parenthetical interruption — a self-contained aside that can be lifted out entirely. Whenever you see a phrase that feels like a muttered aside, look for the pair of dashes that bracket it.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. The narrator introduces himself and explains what led him to sea. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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