Moby Dick

of self-assumed, independent being of its own.  Nay, could grimly
live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined,
fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth.
Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what
seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing,
a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure,
but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself.
God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee;
and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus;
a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very
creature he creates.



CHAPTER 45

The Affidavit


So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed,
as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious
particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its
earlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume;
but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and more
familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood,
and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance
of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural
verity of the main points of this affair.

I care not to perform this part of my task methodically;
but shall be content to produce the desired impression
by separate citations of items, practically or reliably known
to me as a whaleman; and from these citations, I take it--
the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.

First:  I have personally known three instances where a whale,
after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape;
and, after an interval (in one instance of three years), has been
again struck by the same hand, and slain; when the two irons,
both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken from the body.
In the instance where three years intervened between the flinging
of the two harpoons; and I think it may have been something more
than that; the man who darted them happening, in the interval,
to go in a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore there,
joined a discovery party, and penetrated far into the interior,
where he travelled for a period of nearly two years, often endangered
by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other
common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions.
Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have been on its travels;
no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its
flanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose.  This man and
this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other.
I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this;
that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the second
attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them,
afterwards taken from the dead fish.  In the three-year instance,
it so fell out that I was in the boat both times, first and last,
and the last time distinctly recognized a peculiar sort of huge mole
under the whale's eye, which I had observed there three years previous.
I say three years, but I am pretty sure it was more than that.
Here are three instances, then, which I personally know the truth of;
but I have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity
in the matter there is no good ground to impeach.

Secondly:  It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however ignorant
the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several
memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean
has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable.
Why such a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally
owing to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales;
for however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be,
they soon put an end to his peculiarities by killing him, and boiling
him down into a peculiarly valuable oil.  No:  the reason was this:
that from the fatal experiences of the fishery there hung
a terrible prestige of perilousness about such a whale as there
did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were
content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins
when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea,
without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance.
Like some poor devils ashore that happen to known an irascible
great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him
in the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further,
they might receive a summary thump for their presumption.

But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great
individual celebrity--nay, you may call it an oceanwide renown;
not only was he famous in life and now is immortal in
forecastle stories after death, but he was admitted into
all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name;
had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar.  Was it not so,
O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg,
who so long did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name,
whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay?  Was it
not so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed
their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land?  Was it not so,
O Morquan!  King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times
assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky?
Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like
an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back!
In plain prose, here are four whales as well known to the students