Meaning: Fate, change, intuition.
Depiction: The tiller of the Pequod, made from a whale jawbone.
Text: Chapter 16- The Ship
Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe.
Comments: Yes, a ship's wheel would have been a much better image for this, but the Pequod didn't have a wheel. This is one of those things you just have to go with.
Alternate Depiction: Queequeg and Ishmael weaving a sword mat together (Chapter 47- The Mat Maker). The problem with this image is that you would have no way of reading this card by image alone. But it makes so much sense in the context of the book. As they weave, Ishmael imagines that he's a shuttle weaving fate at the "Loom of Time," and that the movement of Queequeg's sword shaping the mat fabric is a combination of chance, free will, and necessity "all interweavingly working together."
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