Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
CHAPTER 82
The Honor and Glory of Whaling
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method.
The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches
up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed
with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I
find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts,
who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported
with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately,
to so emblazoned a fraternity.
The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman;
and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first
whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any
sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession,
when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill
men's lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus
and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king,
was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in
the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen,
intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered
and married the maid.
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