THE WHITE WHALE 
41 
lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are tumbling overboard; when 
the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank 
thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah’s head; in all this raging 
tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and 
raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he 
the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is 
cleaving the seas -after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down 
into the sides of the ship — a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, 
and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and 
shrieks in his dead ear, ‘What meanest thou, O sleeper! arise!’ 
Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his 
feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the 
sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leap- 
ing over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, and 
finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners 
come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon 
shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness over- 
head, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, 
but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep. 
“Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his 
cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The 
sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of 
him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter 
to high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this 
great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah’s; that discovered, 
then how furiously they mob him with their questions. ‘What is thine 
occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people?’ 
But mark now, my shipmates, the behaviour of poor J onah. The eager 
mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not 
only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer 
to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from 
Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him. 
“ ‘I am a Hebrew,’ he cries — and then — ‘I fear the Lord the God 
of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!’ Fear him, O 
Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straight- 
way, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mari- 
ners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when 
