Four of Cups

Meaning: Contemplation, looking inward (Biddy Tarot); inability to see what is in front of you (Labyrinthos).

Depiction: Ishmael  carefully observes the murky nautical painting  in the entryway at the Spouter-Inn, attempting to decipher it.  Behind him, the three pewter cups of the suit hang on the wall; a fourth cup is visible in the painting if you look carefully.

Text: Chapter 3- The Spouter-Inn.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. 

Whalers 1 by J. M. Turner (1884)

Comments: In the book, the wall behind Ishmael is "hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears;" I'm taking some artistic liberties by putting some cups there instead.