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 curious

particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in

its earlier 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 more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately

understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound

ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the

natural verity 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 impression by separate citations

of items, practically or reliably known to 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 been again

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 flinging of the

two harpoons; and I think it may have been something more than 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 endangered by serpents, savages,

tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common 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 its flanks all the

coasts of Africa; but to no purpose. This man and this 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 second attack, 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 mole under 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 veracity in the matter there is no good ground to

impeach.

  Secondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however

ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several

memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean

has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such

a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing

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 boiling him down

into a peculiarly valuable oil. No: the reason was this: that from the

fatal experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of

perilousness about such a whale as there did about Rinaldo

Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognise

him by merely touching their tarpaulins when 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 irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive

salutations to him in 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 great

individual celebrity- nay, you may call it an oceanwide renown; not

only was he famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories

after death, but he was admitted into all 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

a 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 it

not so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed

their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O

Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumed

the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky? Was it not so,

O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with

mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain prose, here are four

whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius

or Sylla to the classic scholar.

  But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at

various times 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 their

anchors with that express object as much in view, as in setting out

through the Narragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had it in 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 reasonableness

of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the

catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where

truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are

most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the

world, that without some 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 general

perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid

conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur.

One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters

and deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at

home, however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do

you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps

caught by the whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried

down to the bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan- do you

suppose that that poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaper

obituary you will read to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because the

mails are very irregular between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you

ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirect from

New Guinea? Yet I will tell you that upon one particular voyage

which I made to the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirty

different 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 gallon

you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.

  Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a

whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found

that when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold

enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my

facetiousness; when, I declare upon my 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 established

upon 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 day she saw

spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoal of 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 land in their boats. Being returned home at last,

Captain Pollard once 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 forthwith

forswearing the sea, he has never attempted it since. At this day

Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace,

who was chief mate of the Essex at the time of the tragedy; I have

read his plain and faithful narrative; I have conversed with his

son; and all this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe.*

  *The following are extracts from Chace's narrative: "Every fact

seemed to warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance

which directed his operations; he made two several attacks upon the

ship, at a short interval between them, both of which, according to

their direction, were calculated to do us the most injury, by being

made ahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the

shock; to effect which, the exact manoeuvres which he made were

necessary. His aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated

resentment and fury. He came directly from the shoal which we had just

before entered, and in which we had struck three of his companions, as

if fired with revenge for their sufferings." Again: "At all events,

the whole circumstances taken together, all happening before my own

eyes, and producing, at the time, impressions in my mind of decided,

calculating mischief, on the part of the whale (many of which

impressions I cannot now recall), induce me to be satisfied that I

am correct in my opinion."

  Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a

black night an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any

hospitable shore. "The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing;

the fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed

upon hidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful

contemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought; the

dismal looking wreck, and the horrid aspect and revenge of the

whale, wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again made its

appearance."

  In another place- p.45,- he speaks of "the mysterious and mortal

attack of the animal."

  Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807

totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic

particulars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter,

though from the whale hunters I have now and then heard casual

allusions to it.

  Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J-- then

commanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be

dining with a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship

in the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon

whales, the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing

strength ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present. He

peremptorily denied for example, that any whale could so smite his

stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful.

Very good; but there is more coming. Some weeks later, the Commodore

set sail in this impregnable craft for 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 nearest port to heave down and repair. I am

not superstitious, but I consider 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

circumstance in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof.

Langsdorff, you must know by the way, was attached to the Russian

Admiral Krusenstern's famous 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 way to Ochotsh. The weather

was very clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were

obliged to keep on our fur clothing. For some days we had very

little wind; it was not till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the

northwest sprang up. An uncommonly large whale, the body of which

was larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the

water, but was not perceived by any one on board till the moment

when 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 gigantic creature, setting

up its back, raised the ship three feet at least out 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 we saw the monster sailing off with the

utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain D'Wolf applied immediately to

the pumps to examine whether 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 ship in

question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual

adventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of

Dorchester near Boston. I have the honor of being a nephew of his. I

have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in

Langsdorff. He substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by

no means a large one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and

purchased by my uncle after 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 matter set down so

like that just quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot 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 about one hundred and

fifty leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible

shock, which put our men in such consternation that they could

hardly tell where they were or what to think; but every one began to

prepare for death. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent,

that we took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock; but

when the amazement was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded,

but found no ground. * * * The suddenness 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

thrown out of his cabin!" Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to

an earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by 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 early hour of the morning, the shock was

after all caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from

beneath.

  I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known

to 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 chase the

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 examples where the lines

attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to

the ship, and secured there! the whale towing her 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 fail to see, that not only

is the most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain

facts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels)

are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth time we

say amen with Solomon- Verily there is nothing new under the sun.

  In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian

magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor

and Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his

own times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best

authorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy and

unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two particulars, not

at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned.

  Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the

term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was

captured in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having

destroyed vessels at 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 this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he

destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have been a

whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will

tell you why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had

been always unknown 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 habitual gregarious resort. But further investigations have

recently proved to me, that in modern times there have been isolated

instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I

am told, on good authority, that on the Barbary coast, a Commodore

Davis of the British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as

a vessel of war readily passes through 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 peculiar

substance 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 properly put 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 ships of a Roman Emperor, must in

all probability have been a sperm whale.