187 
THE WHITE WHALE 
printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole 
story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this 
is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as 
much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of 
the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some 
hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, 
they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and 
more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory. 
First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the gen- 
eral perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid 
conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur. 
One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and 
deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at home, 
however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you sup- 
pose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by the 
whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the 
bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan — do you suppose that that 
poor fellow’s name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read 
to-morrow at your breakfast ? No: because the mails are very irregular 
between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what might 
be called regular news direct or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I 
tell you that upon one particular voyage which I made to the Pacific, 
among many others we spoke thirty different ships, every one of which 
had had a death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three 
that had each lost a boat’s crew. For God’s sake, be economical with 
your lamps and candles ! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop 
of man’s blood was spilled for it. 
Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a 
whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever 
found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two- 
fold enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my 
facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of 
being facetious than Moses when he wrote the history of the plagues 
of Egypt. 
But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon 
testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The 
Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judi- 
