170 
MOBY DICK; OR 
all this came to be — what the White Whale was to them, or how to 
their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, 
he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life, — 
all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The 
subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads 
his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does 
not feel the irresistible arm drag ? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four 
can stand still ? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the 
time and the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, 
could see naught in that brute but the deadliest ill. 
CHAPTER XLI 
THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE 
What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, 
he was to me, as yet remains unsaid. 
Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, 
which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, 
there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning 
him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the 
rest; and yet so mystical and well-nigh ineffable was it, that I almost 
despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness 
of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope 
to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain 
myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught. 
Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances 
beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, 
japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way 
recognised a certain royal pre-eminence in this hue ; even the barbaric, 
grand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Ele- 
phants” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; 
and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quad- 
ruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one 
figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, 
Caesarian heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the 
same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the 
