221 
THE WHITE WHALE 
of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make 
a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, 
again, it would never do in plain sight of the world’s riveted eyes, it 
would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying 
himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his 
hands. Indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he gen- 
eraly carries his hands in his trousers’ pockets; hut perhaps being 
generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast. 
Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones too, 
where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment 
or two — in a sudden squall, say — to seize hold of the nearest oarsman’s 
hair, and hold on there like grim death. 
CHAPTER LIII 
THE TOWN-HO'S STORY 
(As told at the Golden Inn) 
The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, 
is much like some noted four comers of a great highway, where you 
meet more travellers than in any other part. 
It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another home- 
ward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho , 1 was encountered. She was 
manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued 
she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest 
in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of 
the Town-Ho’s story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale 
a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so-called judg- 
ments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This 
latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming 
what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, 
never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. Eor that secret 
part of the story was unknown to the Captain of the Town-Ho himself.* 
It was the private property of three confederate white seamen of that 
1 The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the masthead, 
still used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin. 
