Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER 45

  The Affidavit

  So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed,as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curiousparticulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in itsearlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume;but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and morefamiliarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood,and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignoranceof the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the naturalverity of the main points of this affair.

  I care not to perform this part of my task methodically;but shall be content to produce the desired impressionby separate citations of items, practically or reliably knownto me as a whaleman; and from these citations, I take it--the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.

  First: I have personally known three instances where a whale,after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape;and, after an interval (in one instance of three years), has beenagain struck by the same hand, and slain; when the two irons,both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken from the body.In the instance where three years intervened between the flingingof the two harpoons; and I think it may have been something morethan that; the man who darted them happening, in the interval,to go in a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore there,joined a discovery party, and penetrated far into the interior,where he travelled for a period of nearly two years, often endangeredby serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the othercommon perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions.Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have been on its travels;no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with itsflanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose. This man andthis whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other.I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this;that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the secondattack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them,afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance,it so fell out that I was in the boat both times, first and last,and the last time distinctly recognized a peculiar sort of huge moleunder the whale's eye, which I had observed there three years previous.I say three years, but I am pretty sure it was more than that.Here are three instances, then, which I personally know the truth of;but I have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracityin the matter there is no good ground to impeach.

  Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however ignorantthe world ashore may be of it, that there have been severalmemorable historical instances where a particular whale in the oceanhas been at distant times and places popularly cognisable.Why such a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originallyowing to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales;for however peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be,they soon put an end to his peculiarities by killing him, and boilinghim down into a peculiarly valuable oil. No: the reason was this:that from the fatal experiences of the fishery there hunga terrible prestige of perilousness about such a whale as theredid about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen werecontent to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulinswhen he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea,without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance.Like some poor devils ashore that happen to known an irasciblegreat man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to himin the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further,they might receive a summary thump for their presumption.

  But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy greatindividual celebrity--nay, you may call it an oceanwide renown;not only was he famous in life and now is immortal inforecastle stories after death, but he was admitted intoall the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name;had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not so,O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg,who so long did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name,whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was itnot so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossedtheir wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so,O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at timesassumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky?Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked likean old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back!In plain prose, here are four whales as well known to the studentsof Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to the classic scholar.

  But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at varioustimes creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels,were finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out,chased and killed by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up theiranchors with that express object as much in view, as in settingout through the Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had itin his mind to capture that notorious murderous savage Annawon,the headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip.

  I do not know where I can find a better place than just here,to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important,as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonablenessof the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe.For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requiresfull as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of someof the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that withoutsome 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 generalperils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vividconception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur.One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disastersand deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public recordat home, however transient and immediately forgotten that record.Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhapscaught by the whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is beingcarried down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan--do you suppose that that poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaperobituary you will read to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because themails are very irregular between here and New Guinea. In fact,did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirectfrom New Guinea? Yet I will tell you that upon one particular voyagewhich I made to the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirtydifferent 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 gallonyou burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.

  Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite ideathat a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power;but I have ever found that when narrating to them some specificexample of this two-fold enormousness, they have significantlycomplimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I declare uponmy 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 establishedupon testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this:The Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing,and judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in,utterly destroy, and sink a large ship; and what is more,the Sperm Whale has done it.

  First: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard,of Nantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One dayshe saw spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoalof sperm whales. Ere long, several of the whales were wounded;when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping from the boats,issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the ship.Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in,that in less than "ten minutes" she settled down and fell over.Not a surviving plank of her has been seen since.After the severest exposure, part of the crew reached the landin their boats. Being returned home at las
t, Captain Pollardonce more sailed for the Pacific in command of another ship,but the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers;for the second time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwithforswearing the sea, he has never attempted it since.At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I haveseen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the timeof the tragedy; I have read his plain and faithful narrative;I have conversed with his son; and all this within a few milesof the scene of the catastrophe.*

  *The following are extracts from Chace's narrative:"Every fact seemed to warrant me in concluding that it wasanything but chance which directed his operations; he made twoseveral attacks upon the ship, at a short interval between them,both of this catastrophe I have never chanced to their direction,were calculated to do us the whale hunters I have now and thenheard casual allusions to it.

  Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J---then commandingan American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be diningwith a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in theharbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales,the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazingstrength ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present.He peremptorily denied for example, that any whale couldso smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so muchas a thimbleful. Very good; but there is more coming.Some weeks later, the Commodore set sail in this impregnable craftfor Valparaiso. But he was stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale,that begged a few moments' confidential business with him.That business consisted in fetching the Commodore's craft such a thwack,that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearestport to heave down and repair. I am not superstitious, but Iconsider the Commodore's interview with that whale as providential.Was not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a similar fright?I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense.

  I will now refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a little circumstancein point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, youmust know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern'sfamous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present century.Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter:

  "By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail,and the next day we were out in the open sea, on our wayto Ochotsh. The weather was very clear and fine, but so intolerablycold that we were obliged to keep on our fur clothing.For some days we had very little wind; it was not tillthe nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up.An uncommonly large whale, the body of which was largerthan the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the water,but was not perceived by any one on board till the momentwhen the ship, which was in full sail, was almost upon him,so that it was impossible to prevent its striking against him.We were thus placed in the most imminent danger, as this giganticcreature, setting up its back, raised the ship three feet at leastout of the water. The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether,while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck,concluding that we had struck upon some rock; instead of this wesaw the monster sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity.Captain D'Wolf applied immediately to the pumps to examinewhether or not the vessel had received any damage from the shock,but we found that very happily it had escaped entirely uninjured."

  Now, the Captain D'Wolf here alluded to as commanding the shipin question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusualadventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the villageof Dorchester near Boston. I have the honor of being a nephewof his. I have particularly questioned him concerningthis passage in Langsdorff. He substantiates every word.The ship, however, was by no means a large one: a Russiancraft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased by my uncleafter bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home.

  In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure,so full, too, of honest wonders--the voyage of Lionel Wafer,one of ancient Dampier's old chums--I found a little matterset down so like that just quoted from Langsdorff, that Icannot forbear inserting it here for a corroborative example,if such be needed.

  Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando,"as he calls the modern Juan Fernandes. "In our way thither,"he says, "about four o'clock in the morning, when we were aboutone hundred and fifty leagues from the Main of America, our shipfelt a terrible shock, which put our men in such consternationthat they could hardly tell where they were or what to think;but every one began to prepare for death. And, indeed, the shockwas so sudden and violent, that we took it for granted the shiphad struck against a rock; but when the amazement was a little over,we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground. ... Thesuddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages,and several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks.Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrownout of his cabin!" Lionel then goes on to impute the shockto an earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputationby stating that a great earthquake, somewhere about that time,did actually do great mischief along the Spanish land.But I should not much wonder if, in the darkness of that earlyhour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by an unseenwhale vertically bumping the hull from beneath.

  I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another knownto me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale.In more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chasethe assailing boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself,and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks.The English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head;and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have been exampleswhere the lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm,been transferred to the ship, and secured there! the whale towingher great hull through the water, as a horse walks off with a cart.Again, it is very often observed that, if the sperm whale, once struck,is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage,as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to his pursuers;nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his character,that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth,and retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes.But I must be content with only one more and a concluding illustration;a remarkable and most significant one, by which you will not failto see, that not only is the most marvellous event in this bookcorroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels(like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that forthe millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is nothingnew under the sun.

  In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christianmagistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinianwas Emperor and Belisarius general. As many know, he wrotethe history of his own times, a work every way of uncommon value.By the best authorities, he has always been considered a mosttrustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in some oneor two particulars, not at all affecting the matter presentlyto be mentioned.

  Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term ofhis prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in theneighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vesselsat intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years.A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid.Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what precise species thissea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships,as well as for other reasons, he must have been a whale; and I amstrongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why.For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been alwaysunknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it.Even now I am certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be,in the present constitution of things, a place for his habitualgregarious resort. But further investigations have recently proved to me,that in modern times there have been isolated instances of the presenceof the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority,that on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy foundthe skeleton of a sperm whale. Now,
as a vessel of war readily passesthrough the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route,pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.

  In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiarsubstance called brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale.But I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale--squid or cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea,because large creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort,have been found at its surface. If, then, you properlyput these statements together, and reason upon them a bit,you will clearly perceive that, according to all human reasoning,Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a century stove the shipsof a Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm whale.