It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered.
She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that
ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general
interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance
of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale
a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called
judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men.
This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments,
forming what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to
be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates.
For that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain
of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three
confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it seems,
communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy,
but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed
so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not
well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did
this thing have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full
knowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so,
were they governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among
themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast.
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