There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed
to entangle his delirious but still methodical scheme.
But not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious
sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds,
yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which haunted
such and such a latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn
out to be identically the same with those that were found there
the preceding season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable
instances where the contrary of this has proved true.
In general, the same remark, only within a less wide limit,
applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured,
aged sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had in a former
year been seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle
ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast;
yet it did not follow that were the Pequod to visit either
of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season,
she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some
other feeding-grounds, where he had at times revealed himself.
But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and
ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode.
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