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- have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff.
He substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no means a large
one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased by my
uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home.
In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full,
too, of honest wonders—the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient
Dampier’s old chums—I found a little matter set down so like that just
quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a
corroborative example, if such be needed.
Lionel, it seems, was on his way to “John Ferdinando,” as he calls the
modern Juan Fernandes. “In our way thither,” he says, “about four
o’clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty
leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which
put our men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where
they were or what to think; but every one began to prepare for death.
And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, that we took it for
granted the ship had struck against a rock; but when the amazement was
a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground. * *
* * * The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their
carriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks.
Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his
cabin!” Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and
seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a great
earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief
along the Spanish land. But I should not much wonder if, in the
darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after all
caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath.
I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to
me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more
than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing
boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long
withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship
Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength, let
me say, that there have been examples where the lines attached to a
running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and
secured there; the whale towing her great hull through the water, as a
horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if
the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts,
not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of
destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent
indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will
frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for
several consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more
and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one,
by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous
event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but
that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages;
so that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon—Verily there is
nothing new under the sun.
In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate
of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and
Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own
times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he
has always been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating
historian, except in some one or two particulars, not at all affecting
the matter presently to be mentioned.
Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term
of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured
in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed
vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty
years. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be
gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what precise species
this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as
well as for other reasons, he must have been a whale; and I am strongly
inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long
time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the
Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now I am
certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the
present constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious
resort. But further investigations have recently proved to me, that in
modern times there have been isolated instances of the presence of the
sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that on
the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the
skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes
through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route,
pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar
substance called _brit_ is to be found, the aliment of the right whale.
But I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm
whale—squid or cuttle-fish—lurks at the bottom of that sea, because
large creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort, have been
found at its surface. If, then, you properly put these statements
together, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that,
according to all human reasoning, Procopius’s sea-monster, that for
half a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all
probability have been a sperm whale.
CHAPTER 46. Surmises.
Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby
Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that
one passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and
long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways, altogether
to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if
this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more
influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the
White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all
sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he
multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would
prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be
indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which,
though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling
passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him.
To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in
the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew,
for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was
over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual
man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual
mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in
a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced
will were Ahab’s, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain;
still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred
his captain’s quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself
from it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would
elapse ere the White Whale was seen.