MOBY-DICK;
or, THE WHALE.
By Herman Melville
CONTENTS
ETYMOLOGY.
EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
CHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.
CHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.
CHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.
CHAPTER 5. Breakfast.
CHAPTER 6. The Street.
CHAPTER 7. The Chapel.
CHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.
CHAPTER 9. The Sermon.
CHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.
CHAPTER 11. Nightgown.
CHAPTER 12. Biographical.
CHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.
CHAPTER 14. Nantucket.
CHAPTER 15. Chowder.
CHAPTER 16. The Ship.
CHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.
CHAPTER 18. His Mark.
CHAPTER 19. The Prophet.
CHAPTER 20. All Astir.
CHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.
CHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.
CHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.
CHAPTER 24. The Advocate.
CHAPTER 25. Postscript.
CHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.
CHAPTER 28. Ahab.
CHAPTER 29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb.
CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
CHAPTER 32. Cetology.
CHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.
CHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.
CHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.
CHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.
CHAPTER 37. Sunset.
CHAPTER 38. Dusk.
CHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch.
CHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.
CHAPTER 41. Moby Dick.
CHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale.
CHAPTER 43. Hark!
CHAPTER 44. The Chart.
CHAPTER 45. The Affidavit.
CHAPTER 46. Surmises.
CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
CHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.
CHAPTER 49. The Hyena.
CHAPTER 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.
CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
CHAPTER 52. The Albatross.
CHAPTER 53. The Gam.
CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho’s Story.
CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.
CHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes.
CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars.
CHAPTER 58. Brit.
CHAPTER 59. Squid.
CHAPTER 60. The Line.
CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
CHAPTER 62. The Dart.
CHAPTER 63. The Crotch.
CHAPTER 64. Stubb’s Supper.
CHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.
CHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.
CHAPTER 67. Cutting In.
CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.
CHAPTER 69. The Funeral.
CHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.
CHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam’s Story.
CHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.
CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him.
CHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER 75. The Right Whale’s Head—Contrasted View.
CHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.
CHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.
CHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.
CHAPTER 79. The Prairie.
CHAPTER 80. The Nut.
CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin.
CHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.
CHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.
CHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.
CHAPTER 85. The Fountain.
CHAPTER 86. The Tail.
CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.
CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.
CHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.
CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud.
CHAPTER 92. Ambergris.
CHAPTER 93. The Castaway.
CHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.
CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.
CHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.
CHAPTER 97. The Lamp.
CHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.
CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.
CHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.
CHAPTER 101. The Decanter.
CHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.
CHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale’s Skeleton.
CHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.
CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
CHAPTER 106. Ahab’s Leg.
CHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.
CHAPTER 108. Ahab and the Carpenter.
CHAPTER 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin.
CHAPTER 110. Queequeg in His Coffin.
CHAPTER 111. The Pacific.
CHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.
CHAPTER 113. The Forge.
CHAPTER 114. The Gilder.
CHAPTER 115. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor.
CHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.
CHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.
CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
CHAPTER 119. The Candles.
CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
CHAPTER 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks.
CHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning.
CHAPTER 123. The Musket.
CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
CHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.
CHAPTER 127. The Deck.
CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
CHAPTER 129. The Cabin.
CHAPTER 130. The Hat.
CHAPTER 131. The Pequod Meets The Delight.
CHAPTER 132. The Symphony.
CHAPTER 133. The Chase—First Day.
CHAPTER 134. The Chase—Second Day.
CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day.
Epilogue
Original Transcriber’s Notes:
This text is a combination of etexts, one from the now-defunct ERIS project at Virginia Tech and one from Project Gutenberg’s archives.The proofreaders of this version are indebted to The University of Adelaide Library for preserving the Virginia Tech version.The resulting etext was compared with a public domain hard copy version of the text.
ETYMOLOGY.
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)
The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now.He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief,mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world.He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.
“While you take in hand to school others,and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out,through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word,you deliver that which is not true.” —_Hackluyt._
“WHALE. * * * Sw. and Dan. _hval_. This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan._hvalt_ is arched or vaulted.” —_Webster’s Dictionary._
“WHALE. * * * It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. _Wallen_; A.S. _Walw-ian_, to roll, to wallow.” —_Richardson’s Dictionary._
חו, _Hebrew_. ϰητος, _Greek_. CETUS, _Latin_. WHŒL, _Anglo-Saxon_. HVALT, _Danish_. WAL, _Dutch_.HWAL, _Swedish_. HVALUR, _Icelandic_. WHALE, _English_. BALEINE, _French_. BALLENA, _Spanish_.PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Fegee_. PEHEE-NUEE-NUEE, _Erromangoan_.
EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian).
It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.
So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless,sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm;and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit,and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly,with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs!For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world,by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless!Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye!But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts;for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens,and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming.Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!
EXTRACTS.
“And God created great whales.” —_Genesis_.
“Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary.” —_Job_.
“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” —_Jonah_.
“There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein.” —_Psalms_.
“In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent;and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” —_Isaiah_.
“And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat,or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his,and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.” —_Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals_.
“The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene,take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of land.” —_Holland’s Pliny_.
“Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea,when about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former,one was of a most monstrous size.... This came towards us, open-mouthed,raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam.” —_Tooke’s Lucian_. “_The True History_.”
“He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales,which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the king....The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some were forty-eight,some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.” —_Other or Other’s verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by King Alfred, A.D._ 890.
“And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel,that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth,are immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great security,and there sleeps.” —MONTAIGNE. —_Apology for Raimond Sebond_.
“Let us fly, let us fly!Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job. ” —_Rabelais_.
“This whale’s liver was two cartloads.” —_Stowe’s Annals_.
“The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.” —_Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms_.
“Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received nothing certain.They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.” —_Ibid_. “_History of Life and Death_.”
“The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.” —_King Henry_.
“Very like a whale.” —_Hamlet_.
“Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art Mote him availle,but to returne againe To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart, Dinting his breast,had bred his restless paine, Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine. ” —_The Fairie Queen_.
“Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil.” —_Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert_.
“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt,since the learned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, _Nescio quid sit_.” —_Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E._
“Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. ...Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears, And on his back a grove of pikes appears.” —_Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands_.
“By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—(in Latin,Civitas) which is but an artificial man.” —_Opening sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan_.
“Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale. ” —_Pilgrim’s Progress_.
“That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream. ” —_Paradise Lost_.
—“There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures,in the deep Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land;and at his gills Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea.” —_Ibid_.
“The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them. ” —_Fuller’s Profane and Holy State_.
“So close behind some promontory lie The huge Leviathan to attend their prey, And give no chance,but swallow in the fry, Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way. ” —_Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis_.
“While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his head,and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come;but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.” —_Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas_.
“In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean,and in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents,which nature has placed on their shoulders.” —_Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll_.
“Here they saw such huge troops of whales,that they were forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon them. ” —_Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation_.
“We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The Jonas-in-the-Whale....Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable....They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale,for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains.... I was told of a whale taken near Shetland,that had above a barrel of herrings in his belly....One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.” —_A Voyage to Greenland, A.D._ 1671. _Harris Coll_.
“Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652,one eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was informed),besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen.The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.” —_Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross_.
“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti whale,for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man,such is his fierceness and swiftness.” —_Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D._ 1668.
“Whales in the sea God’s voice obey.” —_N. E. Primer_.
“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those southern seas, as I may say,by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward of us.” —_Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe, A.D._ 1729.
“... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell,as to bring on a disorder of the brain.” —_Ulloa’s South America_.
“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, We trust the important charge, the petticoat.Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.” —_Rape of the Lock_.
“If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude,with those that take up their abode in the deep,we shall find they will appear contemptible in the comparison.The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation.” —_Goldsmith, Nat. Hist_.
“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales. ” —_Goldsmith to Johnson_.
“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was found to be a dead whale,which some Asiatics had killed, and were then towing ashore.They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us. ” —_Cook’s Voyages_.
“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread of some of them,that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone,juniper-wood, and some other articles of the same nature in their boats,in order to terrify and prevent their too near approach.” —_Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in_ 1772.
“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce animal,and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.” —_Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French minister in_ 1778.
“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?” —_Edmund Burke’s reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery_.
“Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.” —_Edmund Burke_. (_somewhere_.)
“A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue,said to be grounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates and robbers,is the right to _royal_ fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these,when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the property of the king.” —_Blackstone_.
“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends The barbed steel, and every turn attends. ” —_Falconer’s Shipwreck_.
“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, And rockets blew self driven,To hang their momentary fire Around the vault of heaven.
“So fire with water to compare, The ocean serves on high, Up-spouted by a whale in air,To express unwieldy joy.” —_Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London_.
“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense velocity.” —_John Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale_. (_A small sized one_.)
“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge,and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale’s heart. ” —_Paley’s Theology_.
“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.” —_Baron Cuvier_.
“In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of May,the sea being then covered with them.” —_Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fishery_.
“In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,Fishes of every colour, form, and kind; Which language cannot paint, and mariner Had never seen;from dread Leviathan To insect millions peopling every wave: Gather’d in shoals immense,like floating islands, Led by mysterious instincts through that waste And trackless region,though on every side Assaulted by voracious enemies, Whales, sharks, and monsters,arm’d in front or jaw, With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.” —_Montgomery’s World before the Flood_.
“Io!Paean!Io!sing. To the finny people’s king. Not a mightier whale than this In the vast Atlantic is;Not a fatter fish than he, Flounders round the Polar Sea.” —_Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale_.
“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other,when one observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for bread. ” —_Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket_.
“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch,by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.” —_Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales_.
“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love,who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.” —_Ibid_.
“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his sprout;he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!” —_Cooper’s Pilot_.
“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.” —_Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe_.
“My God!Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been stove by a whale.” —“_Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket,which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean_.” _By Owen Chace of Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York_, 1821.
“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, The wind was piping free; Now bright, now dimmed,was the moonlight pale, And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,As it floundered in the sea.” —_Elizabeth Oakes Smith_.
“The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture of this one whale,amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles....
“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which, cracking like a whip,resounds to the distance of three or four miles.” —_Scoresby_.
“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks,the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head,and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes at the boats with his head;they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed....It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting, and,in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected,or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous,and many of them competent observers, that of late years,must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.” —_Thomas Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale_, 1839.
“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed than the True Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “in possessing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.” —_Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe_, 1840.
October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head. “Where away?” demanded the captain. “Three points off the lee bow, sir.” “Raise up your wheel. Steady!” “Steady, sir.” “Mast-head ahoy!Do you see that whale now?” “Ay ay, sir!A shoal of Sperm Whales!There she blows!There she breaches!” “Sing out!sing out every time!” “Ay Ay, sir!There she blows!there—there—_thar_ she blows—bowes—bo-o-os!” “How far off?” “Two miles and a half.” “Thunder and lightning!so near!Call all hands.” —_J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize_. 1846.
“The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions we are about to relate,belonged to the island of Nantucket.” —“_Narrative of the Globe Mutiny_,” _by Lay and Hussey survivors. A.D._ 1828.
Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded,he parried the assault for some time with a lance;but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat;himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable.” —_Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett_.
“Nantucket itself,” said Mr. Webster, “is a very striking and peculiar portion of the National interest.There is a population of eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea,adding largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.” —_Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in the U. S. Senate,on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket_. 1828.
“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment.” —“_The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman’s Adventures and the Whale’s Biography,gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Preble_.” _By Rev. Henry T. Cheever_.
“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will send you to hell.” —_Life of Samuel Comstock_ (_the mutineer_), _by his brother, William Comstock.Another Version of the whale-ship Globe narrative_.
“The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if possible,to discover a passage through it to India, though they failed of their main object,laid-open the haunts of the whale.” —_McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary_.
“These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward again;for now in laying open the haunts of the whale,the whalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West Passage. ” —_From_ “_Something_” _unpublished_.
“It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck by her near appearance.The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads,eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them,has a totally different air from those engaged in regular voyage.” —_Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex_.
“Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect having seen large curved bones set upright in the earth,either to form arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves,and they may perhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales.” —_Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean_.
“It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales,that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of the savages enrolled among the crew.” —_Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Whale-Ship Hobomack_.
“It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels (American) few ever return in the ships on board of which they departed. ” —_Cruise in a Whale Boat_.
“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up perpendicularly into the air.It was the whale.” —_Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman_.
“The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage a powerful unbroken colt,with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his tail.” —_A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks_.
“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and female, slowly swimming,one after the other, within less than a stone’s throw of the shore” (Terra Del Fuego),“over which the beech tree extended its branches.” —_Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist_.
“‘Stern all!’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head,he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat,threatening it with instant destruction;—‘Stern all, for your lives!’” —_Wharton the Whale Killer_.
“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!” —_Nantucket Song_.
“Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale In his ocean home will be A giant in might,where might is right, And King of the boundless sea.” —_Whale Song_.
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
Call me Ishmael. 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.It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp,drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses,and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me,that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street,and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then,I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree,some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes,belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf.Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery,where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes,which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
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?What do they here?
But look!here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange!Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land;loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No.They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys,streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me,does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?