Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
_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 spout; 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“The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats engaged in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 I.
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
down-town 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