I was as if reading -- seeing -- being a novel by Jane Austen (so it was in the dream, although this isn't really a Jane Austen type) of a little girl in Puritan times in New England, sort of masochistically un-fun-loving and full of religious fervor, who liked to endure hardships unnecessarily. I was not enjoying the novel, but kept up with it because it was supposed to be a classic and therefore had to be good. This "novel" merged into another story based on Moby Dick. A small boy by a lake was fishing, and from the dark water some enormous thing rose up and ate all of his line. He ran away. The dark thing in the water was a whale which was going to devour everything, or at least was very threatening. Some man was going to go out in a boat and fight it, I think.