old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in
him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have
wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on
profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the
mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural
revenge.

Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with
curses a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too,
chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and
cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere
unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invunerable
jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading
mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially
picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his
monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded to
the old man's ire--by what evil magic their souls were possessed,
that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much
their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be--what the
White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings,
also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding
great demon of the seas of life,--all this to explain, would be to
dive deeper than Ishmael can go. The subterranean miner that works
in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever
shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not feel the
irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand
still? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and
the place; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see
naught in that brute but the deadliest ill.



CHAPTER 42

The Whiteness of The Whale.


What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times, he
was to me, as yet remains unsaid.

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick,
which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm,
there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror
concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely
overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable
was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form.
It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.
But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim,
random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be
naught.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty,
as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles,
japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way
recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the
barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the
White Elephants" above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of
dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white
quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the
one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire,
Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour
the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to
the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over
every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been
even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone
marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and
symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching,
noble things--the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though
among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum
was the deepest pledge of honour; though in many climes, whiteness
typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and
contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by
milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most
august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine
spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white
forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek
mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white
bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of
the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their
theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest
envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of
their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for
white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their
sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and
though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially
employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the
Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the
four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white
throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for
all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and
honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the
innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul
than that redness which affrights in blood.

This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness,
when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any
object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest
bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of
the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the
transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which


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