THE WHITE WHALE 
337 
One old Sag-Harbour whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the 
Hebrew story was this: — He had one of those quaint old-fashioned 
Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which 
represented Jonah’s whale with two spouts in his head^-a peculiarity 
only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, 
and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have 
this saying, “A penny roll would choke him”; his swallow is so very 
small. But, to this, Bishop J ebb’s anticipative answer is ready. It is 
not necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in 
the whale’s belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. 
And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the 
Right Whale’s mouth would accommodate a couple of whist tables, and 
comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have 
ensconced himself in a hollow tooth ; but, on second thoughts, the Right 
Whale is toothless. 
Another reason which Sag-Harbour (he went by that name) urged 
for his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something ob- 
scurely in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale’s gastric 
juices. But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a Ger- 
man exegetist supposed that Jonah must have taken refuge in the float- 
ing body of a dead whale — even as the French soldiers in the Russian 
campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. 
Besides, it has been divined by other continental commentators, that 
when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straight- 
way effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a 
whale for a figure-head ; and, I would add, possibly called The Whale, 
as some crafts are nowadays christened the Shark, the Gull , and the 
Eagle. Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists who have 
opined that the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant 
a life-preserver — an inflated bag of wind — which the endangered 
prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom. Poor Sag- 
Harbour, therefore, seems worsted all around. But he had still another 
reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right : J onah 
was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three 
days he was vomited up somewhere within three days’ journey of Nin- 
eveh, a city on the Tigris, ’very much more than three days’ journey 
