100 
MOBY DICK; OR 
of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Eolgers and Har- 
pooneers — all kith and kin to noble Benjamin — this day darting the 
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. 
“Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not 
respectable.” 
Whaling not respectable ? Whaling is imperial! By old English 
statutory law, the whale is declared “a royal fish.” 1 
“Oh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured 
in any grand imposing way.” 
The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In one of 
the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the 
world’s capital, the hones of a whale brought all the way from the 
Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed pro- 
cession. 
“Grant it, since you cite it ; but, say what you will, there is no real 
dignity in whaling.” 
No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very heavens 
attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South ! No more ! Drive down 
your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg ! no more ! 
I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty 
whales. I account that man more honourable than that great Captain 
of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns. 
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered 
prime thing in me ; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small 
but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious 
of ; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might 
rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my execu- 
tors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, 
then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whal- 
ing; for a whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. 
CHAPTER XXV 
KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES 
The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, 
and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born 
1 See subsequent chapters for something more on this head. 
