Moby Dick

that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession?
But often possession is the whole of the law.  What are the sinews
and souls of Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish,
whereof possession is the whole of the law?  What to the rapacious
landlord is the widow's last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder
undetected villain's marble mansion with a doorplate for a waif;
what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount
which Mordecai, the broker, gets from the poor Woebegone,
the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family from starvation;
what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop
of Savesoul's income of 100,000 pounds seized from the scant bread
and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers
(all sure of heaven without any of Savesoul's help) what is that globular
100,000 but a Fast-Fish. What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns
and hamlets but Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull,
is poor Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer,
Brother Jonathan, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these,
is not Possession the whole of the law?

But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable,
the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so.
That is internationally and universally applicable.

What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus
struck the Spanish standard by way of wailing it for his royal
master and mistress?  What was Poland to the Czar?  What Greece
to the Turk?  What India to England?  What at last will Mexico
be to the United States?  All Loose-Fish.

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but
Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What
is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What
to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers
but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And
what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?



CHAPTER 90

Heads or Tails


  "De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam."
                                      BRACTON, L. 3, C. 3.


Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with
the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast
of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have
the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail.
A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is
no intermediate remainder.  Now as this law, under a modified form,
is to this day in force in England; and as it offers in various respects
a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast--and Loose-Fish,
it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous
principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a
separate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty.
In the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned
law is still in force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance-that
happened within the last two years.

It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich,
or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded
in killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originally
descried afar off from the shore.  Now the Cinque Ports are
partially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman
or beadle, called a Lord Warden.  Holding the office directly
from the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incident
to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment his.
By some writers this office is called a sinecure.  But not so.
Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing
his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same
fobbing of them.

Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their
trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled
their fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good 150 pounds
from the precious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea
with their wives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strength
of their respective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christian
and charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm;
and laying it upon the whale's head, he says--"Hands off! this fish,
my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's." Upon this
the poor mariners in their respectful consternation--so truly English--
knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their heads
all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the stranger.
But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the hard heart
of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone.  At length one
of them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak,

"Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?"

"The Duke."

"But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?"

"It is his."

"We have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense,