6 
MOBY DICK; OR 
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; 
the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild 
conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into 
my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, midmost of them 
all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. 
CHAPTER II 
THE CAKPET-BAG 
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my 
arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good 
city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in Hew Bedford. It was on a 
Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learn- 
ing that the little packet for Hantucket had already sailed, and that 
no way of reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday. 
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling 
stop at this same Hew Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it 
may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For 
my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Hantucket craft, 
because there was a fine boisterous something about everything con- 
nected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Be- 
sides, though Hew Bedford has of late been gradually monopolising 
the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Hantucket 
is now much behind her, yet Hantucket was her great original — the 
Tyre of this Carthage ; — the place where the first dead American whale 
was stranded. Where else but from Hantucket did those aboriginal 
whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the 
Leviathan? And where but from Hantucket, too, did that first ad- 
venturous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobble- 
stones — so goes the story — to throw at the whales, in order to discover 
when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit ? 
How having a night, a day, and still another night, following before 
me in Hew Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became 
a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It 
was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly 
cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grap- 
