 years. A fact thus set
down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason
it should be. Of what precise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned.
But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have been a
whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you
why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in
the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now I am certain
that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present constitution
of things, a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further
investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times there have been
isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am
told, on good authority, that on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the
British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war
readily passes through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same
route, pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.
    In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance
called brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have every
reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale - squid or cuttle-fish -
lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but by no means the
largest of that sort, have been found at its surface. If, then, you properly put
these statements together, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive
that, according to all human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a
century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a
sperm whale.
 

                                  Chapter XLVI

                                    Surmises

Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and
actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby-Dick; though he seemed
ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one passion; nevertheless it may
have been that he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery
whaleman's ways, altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage.
Or at least if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much
more influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness toward the White
Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales
