165 
THE WHITE WHALE 
It is a thing well known to both American and English whale ships, 
and as well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by 
Scoresby, that some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific, 
in whose bodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the 
Greenland seas, Hor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these in- 
stances it has been declared that the interval of time between the two 
assaults could not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by in- 
ference, it has been believed by some whalemen, that the Hor’-West 
Passage, so long a problem to man, was never a problem to the whale. 
So that here, in the real living experience of living men, the prodigies 
related in old times of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near 
whose top there was said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships 
floated up to the surface) ; and that still more wonderful story of the 
Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have 
come from the Holy Land by an underground passage) ; these fabulous 
narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whaleman. 
Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and know- 
ing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped 
alive ; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should 
go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only 
ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in time) ; 
that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would 
still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to 
spout thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for 
again in unensanguined billows hundred of leagues away, his unsullied 
jet would once more be seen. 
But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was 
enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of the mon- 
ster to strike the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not 
so much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other 
sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown out — a peculiar snow- 
white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidal white hump. These 
were his prominent features ; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, 
uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those 
who knew him. 
The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with 
the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive 
