162 
MOBY DICK; OR 
of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not 
unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the 
monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident igno- 
rantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most 
part, were content ix> ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it 
were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the 
individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter 
between Ahab and the whale had hitherto been popularly 
regarded. 
And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by 
chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had 
every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, 
as for any other -whale of that species. But at length, such calamities 
did ensue in these assaults — not restricted to sprained wrists and 
ankles, broken limbs, or devouring amputations — but fatal to the last 
degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating 
and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick ; those things had gone far to 
shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story of the 
White Whale had eventually come. 
Hor did "wild rumours of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the 
more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not 
only do fabulous rumours naturally grow out of the very body of all 
surprising terrible events, — as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi ; 
but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra, firma , wild ru- 
mours abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling 
to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this - matter, so the whale- 
fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness 
and fearfulness of the rumours which- sometimes circulate there. For 
not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and 
superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are 
by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is ap- 
pallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its 
greater marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such 
remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a 
thousand shores, you would not come to any chiselled hearthstones, or 
aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and 
longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is 
