Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
“‘Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me.
As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder
island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike
me!’
“‘A pretty scholar,’ laughed the Lakeman. ‘Adios, Senor!’ and leaping
into the sea, he swam back to his comrades.
“Watching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the
roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due
time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck
befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were
providentially in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor
headed. They embarked; and so for ever got the start of their former
captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.
“Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,
and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized
Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small
native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all
right there, again resumed his cruisings.
“Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of
Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses
to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that
destroyed him. * * * *
“‘Are you through?’ said Don Sebastian, quietly.
“‘I am, Don.’
“‘Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,
this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing
wonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me
if I seem to press.’
“‘Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don
Sebastian’s suit,’ cried the company, with exceeding interest.
“‘Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?’
“‘Nay,’ said Don Sebastian; ‘but I know a worthy priest near by, who
will quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised?
this may grow too serious.’
“‘Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?’
“‘Though there are no Auto-da-Fés in Lima now,’ said one of the company
to another: ‘I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy.
Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.’
“‘Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg
that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists
you can.’
* * * * *
“‘This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,’ said Don
Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.
“‘Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light,
and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.’
“‘So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye,
gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be
true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I
have seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.’”
CHAPTER LV.
OF THE MONSTROUS PICTURES OF WHALES.
I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to
the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is
moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon
there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those
curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day
confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the
world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures.
For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the
marble panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,
medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of
chain-armor like Saladin’s, and a helmeted head like St. George’s;
ever since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed,
not only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific
presentations of him.
Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting
to be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of
Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless
sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits,
every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of
them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our
noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The
Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall,
depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly
known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and
half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small
section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an
anaconda, than the broad palms of the true whale’s majestic flukes.
But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian
painter’s portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than
the antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido’s picture of Perseus rescuing
Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model
of such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the
same scene in his own “Perseus Descending,” make out one whit better.
The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the
surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah
on its back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows
are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors’ Gate leading from the
Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales
of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah’s whale, as depicted in the prints of
old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said of these?
As for the book-binder’s whale winding like a vine-stalk round the
stock of a descending anchor—as stamped and gilded on the backs and
title-pages of many books both old and new—that is a very picturesque
but purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like
figures on antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin,
I nevertheless call this book-binder’s fish an attempt at a whale;
because it was so intended when the device was first introduced. It
was introduced by an old Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th
century, during the Revival of Learning; and in those days, and even
down to a comparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed
to be a species of the Leviathan.
In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you
will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all
manner of spouts, jets d’eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and
Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the
title-page of the original edition of the “Advancement of Learning” you
will find some curious whales.
But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those
pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations,
by those who know. In old Harris’s collection of voyages there are some
plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A. D. 1671,
entitled “A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the
Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master.” In one of those plates
the whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among
ice-isles, with white bears running over their living backs. In another
plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with
perpendicular flukes.
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain
Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled “A Voyage round
Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the
Spermaceti Whale Fisheries.” In this book is an outline purporting
to be a “Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale
from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on
deck.” I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for
the benefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me
say that it has an eye which applied, according to the accompanying
scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale a
bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not
give us Jonah looking out of that eye!
Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the
benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of
mistake. Look at that popular work “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” In
the abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged
“whale” and a “narwhale.” I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this
unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the
narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this
nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon
any intelligent public of schoolboys.
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacépède, a great
naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein
are several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All
these are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or
Greenland whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a
long experienced man as touching that species, declares not to have its
counterpart in nature.
But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous
Baron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which
he gives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing
that picture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary
retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier’s Sperm Whale is
not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had the benefit
of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived that
picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor
in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that
is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the
pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers inform us.
As for the sign-painters’ whales seen in the streets hanging over
the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are
generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage;
breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of
mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.
But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have
been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct
as a drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly
represent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and
spars. Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the living
Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait. The
living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen
at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out
of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element
it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily
into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations.
And, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of contour
between a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan;
yet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a