Moby Dick

floats with great buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably
elevated above the surface.  If the only whales that thus sank
were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their pads
of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic;
then you might with some reason assert that this sinking is
caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so sinking,
consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him.
But it is not so.  For young whales, in the highest health,
and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off
in the warm flush and May of life, with all their panting lard
about them! even these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.

Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less
liable to this accident than any other species.
Where one of that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do.
This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no small
degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale;
his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton;
from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free.  But there
are instances where, after the lapse of many hours or several days,
the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life.
But the reason of this is obvious.  Gases are generated in him;
he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon.
A line-of-battle ship could hardly keep him under then.
In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand,
when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys
to him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone down,
they know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again.

It was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry
was heard from the Pequod's mast-heads, announcing that the
Jungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the only spout
in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species of
uncapturable whales, because of its incredible power of swimming.
Nevertheless, the Fin-Back's spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's,
that by unskilful fishermen it is often mistaken for it.
And consequently Derick and all his host were now in valiant
chase of this unnearable brute.  The Virgin crowding all sail,
made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared
far to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.

Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.



CHAPTER 82

The Honor and Glory of Whaling



There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method.

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches
up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed
with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I
find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts,
who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported
with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately,
to so emblazoned a fraternity.

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman;
and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first
whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any
sordid intent.  Those were the knightly days of our profession,
when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill
men's lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus
and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king,
was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in
the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen,
intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered
and married the maid.  It was an admirable artistic exploit,
rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day;
inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart.
And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa,
now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples,
there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale,
which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted
to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew.
When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy
in triumph.  What seems most singular and suggestively important
in this story, is this:  it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda--indeed, by some
supposed to be indirectly derived from it--is that famous story
of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have
been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons
are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other.
"Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of
the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale;
in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself.
Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit
had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land,
instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep.
Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George,
a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us;
for though the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman