In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab
and the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded.
And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale,
by chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing
they had every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly
lowered for him, as for any other whale of that species.
But at length, such calamities did ensue in these assaults--
not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs,
or devouring amputations--but fatal to the last degree of fatality;
those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling
their terrors upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to
shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story
of the White Whale had eventually come.
Nor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still
the more horrify the true histories of these deadly encounters.
For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body
of all surprising terrible events,--as the smitten tree gives birth
to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma,
wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them
to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this matter,
so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life,
in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes
circulate there.
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