Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

  ETYMOLOGY

  (Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)

  The pale Usher--threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain;I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars,with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gayflags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dusthis old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

  "While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them bywhat name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out,through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh thesignification of the word, you deliver that which is not true." --HACKLUYT

  "WHALE. ... Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundnessor rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted." --WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY

  "WHALE. ... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger.Wallen; A.S. Walw-ian, to roll, to wallow." --RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY

  KETOS, Greek. CETUS, Latin. WHOEL, Anglo-Saxon. HVALT, Danish. WAL, Dutch. HWAL, Swedish. WHALE, Icelandic. WHALE, English. BALEINE, French. BALLENA, Spanish. PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Fegee. PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, Erromangoan.

  EXTRACTS (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian)

  It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-wormof a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the longVaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever randomallusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever,sacred or profane. therefore you must not, in every case at least,take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic,in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it.As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poetshere appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining,as affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has beenpromiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan,by many nations and generations, including our own.

  So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am.Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this worldwill ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong;but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too;and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with fulleyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness--Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much more pains ye take to pleasethe world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless!Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye!But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast withyour hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearingout the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of longpampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming.Here ye strike but splintered hearts together--there, ye shallstrike unsplinterable glasses!

  "And God created great whales." --GENESIS.

  "Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary." --JOB.

  "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah." --JONAH.

  "There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast madeto play therein." --PSALMS.

  "In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword,shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan thatcrooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." --ISAIAH

  "And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of thismonster's mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes allincontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in thebottomless gulf of his paunch." --HOLLAND'S PLUTARCH'S MORALS.

  "The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are:among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as muchin length as four acres or arpens of land." --HOLLAND'S PLINY.

  "Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise agreat many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among theformer, one was of a most monstrous size. ... This came towards us,open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the seabefore him into a foam." --TOOKE'S LUCIAN. "THE TRUE HISTORY."

  "He visited this country also with a view of catchinghorse-whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth,of which he brought some to the king. ... The best whales werecatched in his own country, of which some were forty-eight, some fiftyyards long. He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in twodays." --OTHER OR OCTHER'S VERBAL NARRATIVE TAKEN DOWN FROMHIS MOUTH BY KING ALFRED, A.D. 890.

  "And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, thatenter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, areimmediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into itin great security, and there sleeps." --MONTAIGNE. - APOLOGY FOR RAIMOND SEBOND.

  "Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathandescribed by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job." --RABELAIS.

  "This whale's liver was two cartloads." --STOWE'S ANNALS.

  "The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boilingpan." --LORD BACON'S VERSION OF THE PSALMS.

  "Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have receivednothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that anincredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale." --IBID. "HISTORY OF LIFE AND DEATH."

  "The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inwardbruise." --KING HENRY.

  "Very like a whale." --HAMLET.

  "Which to secure, no skill of leach's art Mote him availle, but to returne againe To his wound's worker, that with lowly dart, Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine, Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro' the maine." --THE FAERIE QUEEN.

  "Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in apeaceful calm trouble the ocean til it boil." --SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT. PREFACE TO GONDIBERT.

  "What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learnedHosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quidsit." --SIR T. BROWNE. OF SPERMA CETI AND THE SPERMA CETI WHALE. VIDE HIS V. E.

  "Like Spencer's Talus with his modern flail He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail. ... Their fixed jav'lins in his side he wears, And on his back a grove of pikes appears." --WALLER'S BATTLE OF THE SUMMER ISLANDS.

  "By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth orState--(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man." --OPENING SENTENCE OF HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN.

  "Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been asprat in the mouth of a whale." --PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

  "That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream." --PARADISE LOST.

  "There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, in the deep Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land; and at his gills Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea." --IBID.

  "The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea ofoil swimming in them." --FULLLER'S PROFANE AND HOLY STATE.

  "So close behind some promontory lie The huge Leviathan to attend their prey, And give no chance, but swallow in the fry, Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way." --DRYDEN'S ANNUS MIRABILIS.

  "While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cutoff his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it willcome; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water." --THOMAS EDGE'S TEN VOYAGES TO SPITZBERGEN, IN PURCHAS.

  "In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and inwantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, whichnature has placed on their shoulders." --SIR T. HERBERT'S VOYAGES INTO ASIA AND AFRICA. HARRIS COLL.

  "Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forcedto proce
ed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run theirship upon them." --SCHOUTEN'S SIXTH CIRCUMNAVIGATION.

  "We set sail from the Elbe, wind N. E. in the ship called TheJonas-in-the-Whale. ... Some say the whale can't open his mouth, but that is a fable. ... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see awhale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. ... I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrelof herrings in his belly. ... One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale inSpitzbergen that was white all over." --A VOYAGE TO GREENLAND, A.D. 1671 HARRIS COLL.

  "Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, oneeighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as Iwas informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weightof baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden ofPitferren." --SIBBALD'S FIFE AND KINROSS.

  "Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill thisSperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that waskilled by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness." --RICHARD STRAFFORD'S LETTER FROM THE BERMUDAS. PHIL. TRANS. A.D. 1668.

  "Whales in the sea God's voice obey." --N. E. PRIMER.

  "We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in thosesouthern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have tothe northward of us." --CAPTAIN COWLEY'S VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, A.D. 1729.

  "... and the breath of the whale is frequendy attended withsuch an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain." --ULLOA'S SOUTH AMERICA.

  "To fifty chosen sylphs of special note, We trust the important charge, the petticoat. Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, Tho' stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale." --RAPE OF THE LOCK.

  "If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those thattake up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appearcontemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largestanimal in creation." --GOLDSMITH, NAT. HIST.

  "If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would makethem speak like great wales." --GOLDSMITH TO JOHNSON.

  "In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but itwas found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and werethen towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselvesbehind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us." --COOK'S VOYAGES.

  "The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand inso great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraidto mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order toterrify and prevent their too near approach." --UNO VON TROIL'S LETTERS ON BANKS'S AND SOLANDER'SVOYAGE TO ICELAND IN 1772.

  "The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierceanimal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen." --THOMAS JEFFERSON'S WHALE MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH MINISTER IN 1778.

  "And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?" --EDMUND BURKE'S REFERENCE IN PARLIAMENT TO THE NANTUCKET WHALE-FISHERY.

  "Spain--a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe." --EDMUND BURKE. (SOMEWHERE.)

  "A tenth branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to begrounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting theseas from pirates and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which arewhale and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caughtnear the coast, are the property of the king." --BLACKSTONE.

  "Soon to the sport of death the crews repair: Rodmond unerring o'er his head suspends The barbed steel, and every turn attends." --FALCONER'S SHIPWRECK.

  "Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, And rockets blew self driven, To hang their momentary fire Around the vault of heaven.

  "So fire with water to compare, The ocean serves on high, Up-spouted by a whale in air, To express unwieldy joy." --COWPER, ON THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO LONDON.

  "Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at astroke, with immense velocity." --JOHN HUNTER'S ACCOUNT OF THE DISSECTION OF A WHALE. (A SMALL SIZED ONE.)

  "The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe ofthe water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passagethrough that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the bloodgushing from the whale's heart." --PALEY'S THEOLOGY.

  "The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet." --BARON CUVIER.

  "In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not takeany till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them." --COLNETT'S VOYAGE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THE SPERMACETIWHALE FISHERY.

  "In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle, Fishes of every color, form, and kind; Which language cannot paint, and mariner Had never seen; from dread Leviathan To insect millions peopling every wave: Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands, Led by mysterious instincts through that waste And trackless region, though on every side Assaulted by voracious enemies, Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw, With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs." --MONTGOMERY'S WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.

  "Io! Paean! Io! sing. To the finny people's king. Not a mightier whale than this In the vast Atlantic is; Not a fatter fish than he, Flounders round the Polar Sea." --CHARLES LAMB'S TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE.

  "In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing thewhales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed:there--pointing to the sea--is a green pasture where our children'sgrand-children will go for bread." --OBED MACY'S HISTORY OF NANTUCKET.

  "I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in theform of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones." --HAWTHORNE'S TWICE TOLD TALES.

  "She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had beenkilled by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago." --IBID.

  "No, Sir, 'tis a Right Whale," answered Tom; "I saw his sprout; hethrew up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish tolook at. He's a raal oil-butt, that fellow!" --COOPER'S PILOT.

  "The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette thatwhales had been introduced on the stage there." --ECKERMANN'S CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.

  "My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?" I answered, "we have beenstove by a whale." --"NARRATIVE OF THE SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX OFNANTUCKET, WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BYA LARGE SPERM WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN." BY OWENCHACE OF NANTUCKET, FIRST MATE OF SAID VESSEL. NEWYORK, 1821.

  "A mariner sat in the shrouds one night, The wind was piping free; Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale, And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale, As it floundered in the sea." --ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

  "The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in thecapture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards ornearly six English miles. ...

  "Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or fourmiles." --SCORESBY.

  "Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, theinfuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormoushead, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; herushes at the boats with his head; they are propelled before himwith vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed. ... It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration ofthe habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, soimportant an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been soentirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity amongthe numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of lateyears, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenientopportunities of witnessing their habitudes." --THOMAS BEALE'S HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE, 1839.

  "The Cachalot" (Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed
than the TrueWhale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weaponat either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays adisposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner atonce so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its beingregarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species ofthe whale tribe." --FREDERICK DEBELL BENNETT'S WHALING VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, 1840.

  October 13. "There she blows," was sung out from the mast-head. "Where away?" demanded the captain. "Three points off the lee bow, sir." "Raise up your wheel. Steady!" "Steady, sir." "Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?" "Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There shebreaches!" "Sing out! sing out every time!" "Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there--there--thar she blows -bowes-bo-o-os!" "How far off?" "Two miles and a half." "Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands." --J. ROSS BROWNE'S ETCHINGS OF A WHALING CRUIZE. 1846.

  "The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred thehorrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the islandof Nantucket." --"NARRATIVE OF THE GLOBE," BY LAY AND HUSSEY SURVIVORS. A.D. 1828.

  Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried theassault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster atlength rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preservedby leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable." --MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF TYERMAN AND BENNETT.

  "Nantucket itself," said Mr. Webster, "is a very striking andpeculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population ofeight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea, addinglargely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and mostpersevering industry." --REPORT OF DANIEL WEBSTER'S SPEECH IN THE U. S. SENATE,ON THE APPLICATION FOR THE ERECTION OF A BREAKWATER AT NANTUCKET. 1828.

  "The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in amoment." --"THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS, OR THE WHALEMAN'SADVENTURES AND THE WHALE'S BIOGRAPHY, GATHERED ON THEHOMEWARD CRUISE OF THE COMMODORE PREBLE."BY REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER.

  "If you make the least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, "I willsend you to hell." --LIFE OF SAMUEL COMSTOCK (THE MUTINEER), BY HISBROTHER, WILLIAM COMSTOCK. ANOTHER VERSION OF THEWHALE-SHIP GLOBE NARRATIVE.

  "The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, inorder, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India,though they failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of thewhale." --MCCULLOCH'S COMMERCIAL DICTIONARY.

  "These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to boundforward again; for now in laying open the haunts of the whale, thewhalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that samemystic North-West Passage." --FROM "SOMETHING" UNPUBLISHED.

  "It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without beingstruck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, withlook-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expansearound them, has a totally different air from those engaged in regularvoyage." --CURRENTS AND WHALING. U. S. EX. EX.

  "Pedestrians in the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollecthaving seen large curved bones set upright in the earth, either toform arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they mayperhaps have been told that these were the ribs of whales." --TALES OF A WHALE VOYAGER TO THE ARCTIC OCEAN.

  "It was not till the boats returned from the pursuit of thesewhales, that the whites saw their ship in bloody possession of thesavages enrolled among the crew." --NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT OF THE TAKING AND RETAKING OF THE WHALE-SHIP HOBOMACK.

  "It is generally well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels(American) few ever return in the ships on board of which theydeparted." --CRUISE IN A WHALE BOAT.

  "Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot upperpendicularly into the air. It was the while." --MIRIAM COFFIN OR THE WHALE FISHERMAN.

  "The Whale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you wouldmanage a powerful unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a ropetied to the root of his tail." --A CHAPTER ON WHALING IN RIBS AND TRUCKS.

  "On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (whales) probablymale and female, slowly swimming, one after the other, within lessthan a stone's throw of the shore" (Terra Del Fuego), "over whichthe beech tree extended its branches." --DARWIN'S VOYAGE OF A NATURALIST.

  "'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he sawthe distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of theboat, threatening it with instant destruction;--'Stern all, for yourlives!'" --WHARTON THE WHALE KILLER.

  "So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!" --NANTUCKET SONG.

  "Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale In his ocean home will be A giant in might, where might is right, And King of the boundless sea." --WHALE SONG.