Moby Dick

"'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-Fe's in Lima now,' said one of the company
to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs risks 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 55

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 whaleship 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 Elephants, 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 the 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 titlepages 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,