355 
THE WHITE WHALE 
animating token that they were now at last under the influence of that 
strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which when the fishermen per- 
ceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied . 1 The compact martial 
columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swim- 
ming, were now broken up in one measureless rout; and like King 
Porus’ elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going 
mad with consternation. In all directions expanding in vast irreg- 
ular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their short 
thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. 
This was still more strangely evinced by those of their number, who, 
completely paralysed as it were, helplessly floated like water-logged 
dismantled ships on the sea. Had these leviathans been but a flock 
of simple sheep, pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, 
they could not possibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this 
occasional timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures. 
Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffa- 
loes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too, 
all human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of a 
theatre’s pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter- 
skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorse- 
lessly dashing each other to death. Best, therefore, withhold any 
amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no 
folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the 
madness of men. 
Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent mo- 
tion, yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither ad- 
1 To gaily , or gallow, is to frighten excessively, — to confound with fright. 
It is an old Saxon word. It occurs once in Shakespeare — 
“The wrathful skies 
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark, 
And make them keep their caves.” 
Lear, Act iii. Scene 2. 
To common land usages, the word is now completely obsolete. When the 
polite landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is apt to set 
it down as one of the whaleman’s self-derived savageries. Much the same 
is it with many other sinewy Saxonisms of this sort, which emigrated to the 
New England rocks with the noble brawn of the old English emigrants in the 
time of the Commonwealth. Thus, some of the best and farthest English 
descended words — the etymological Howards and Percy s — are now demo- 
cratised, nay plebeianised, so to speak, in the New World. 
