"'Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light,
and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.
"'So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have
told ye, gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true.
I know it to be true; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship;
I knew the crew; I have seen and talked with Steelkilt since
the death of Radney."
CHAPTER 55
Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales
I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears
to the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale
is moored alongside the whaleship so that he can be fairly stepped
upon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert
to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to
the present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman.
It is time to set the world right in this matter, by proving such
pictures of the whale all wrong.
It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures.
For ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble
panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,
medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of
chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St.
Pages:
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436