252 
MOBY DICK; OR 
On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure 
from the attack of a Sperm Whale like the Pequod, with open jaws 
sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres 
of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner 
separated from the water that escaped at the lip. 
As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance 
their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads ; even so these 
monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving 
behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea . 1 
But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which 
at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mastheads especially 
when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black 
forms looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And 
as in the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance 
will sometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing 
them to be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil ; 
even so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species 
of the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at last, their 
immense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such 
bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with 
the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse. 
Indeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of 
the deep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For 
though some old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the 
land are of their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general 
view of the thing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, 
where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition 
answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark 
alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy 
to him. 
But though to landsmen in general the native inhabitants of the seas 
have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repel- 
1 That part of the sea known among whalemen as the “Brazil Banks” 
does not bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there 
being shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable meadow- 
like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those 
latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased. 
