181 
THE WHITE WHALE 
Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, 
the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct — say, rather, secret 
intelligence from the Deity — mostly swim in veins , as they are called ; 
continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating 
exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any charts, with one 
tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the direc- 
tion taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor’s parallel, and 
though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable, 
straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said 
to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as 
the vein is presumed to expand or contract) ; but never exceeds the visual 
sweep from the whale ship’s mastheads, when circumspectly gliding 
along this magic zone. The sum is, that at particular seasons within 
that breadth and along that path, migrating whales may with great con- 
fidence be looked for. 
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known sepa- 
rate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in 
crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, 
by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to 
be wholly without prospect of a meeting. 
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle 
his delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, 
perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular 
seasons for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that 
the herds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this 
year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were 
found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and un- 
questionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In 
general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the 
solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So 
that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on 
what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian Ocean, or Volcano 
which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally 
through each of which districts are three lines; one to show the number of 
days that have been spent in each month in every district, and the two 
others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have 
been seen.” 
