161 
THE WHITE WHALE 
that anaconda of an old man swore ’em in to hunt him! Oh, thou 
big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on 
this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have 
no bowels to feel fear ! 
CHAPTEK XL 
MOBY DICK 
I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the 
rest ; my oath had been welded with theirs ; and stronger I shouted, and 
more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. 
A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless 
feud seemed mine. With greedy ear' I learned the history of that mur- 
derous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of 
violence and revenge. 
For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied, 
secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilised seas mostly fre- 
quented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of 
his existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen 
him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given 
battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of 
whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire 
watery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest 
along solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth 
or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any sort ; 
the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity of the 
times of sailing from home ; all these, with other circumstances, direct 
and indirect, long obstructed the spread through the whole world-wide 
whaling fleet of the special individualising tidings concerning Moby 
Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have 
encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a 
sperm whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, 
after doing great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped 
them ; to some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the 
whale in question must have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as 
