It is a thing well known to both American and English
whale-ships, and as well a thing placed upon authoritative
record years ago by Scoresby, that some whales have been
captured far north in the Pacific, in whose bodies have been
found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas.
Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has
been declared that the interval of time between the two assaults
could not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference,
it has been believed by some whalemen, that the Nor' West Passage,
so long a problem to man, was never a problem to the whale.
So that here, in the real living experience of living men,
the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain
in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which
the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still
more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse
(whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land
by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost
fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.
Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these;
and knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale
had escaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that
some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions;
declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal
(for immortality is but ubiquity in time); that though groves
of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still swim
away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to spout
thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception;
for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away,
his unsullied jet would once more be seen.
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