@nemesis
I've just started reading Moby Dick for the first time.
This passage reminded me of crypto for so many reasons. Maybe not so much crypto as the 'crypto dream' which isn't so unique but certainly has character:
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone?...
And just the whole theme of following a mysterious and dreamy call or preordained fate to explore the fearsome unknown (ocean) to do battle with the whales. And the bit where they go spear phishing.