 strike, that few who by those rumours, at least, had
heard of the White Whale, few of those hunters were willing to encounter the
perils of his jaw.
    But there were still other and more vital practical influences at work. Not
even at the present day has the original prestige of the sperm whale, as
fearfully distinguished from all other species of the leviathan, died out of the
minds of the whalemen as a body. There are those this day among them, who,
though intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or
right whale, would perhaps, either from professional inexperience, or
incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the sperm whale; at any rate,
there are plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing
under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the sperm whale,
but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster
primitively pursued in the North; seated on their hatches, these men will
hearken with a childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of
Southern whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great sperm whale
anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem
him.
    And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary times
thrown its shadow before it; we find some book naturalists - Olassen and
Povelson - declaring the sperm whale not only to be a consternation to every
other creature in the sea, but also to be so incredibly ferocious as continually
to be athirst for human blood. Nor even down to so late a time as Cuvier's, were
these or almost similar impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the
Baron himself affirms that at sight of the sperm whale, all fish (sharks
included) are struck with the most lively terrors, and often in the precipitancy
of their flight dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause
instantaneous death. And however the general experiences in the fishery may
amend such reports as these; yet in their full terribleness, even to the
bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some
vicissitudes of their vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters.
    So that overawed by the rumours and portents concerning him, not a few of
the fishermen recalled, in reference to Moby-Dick, the earlier days of the sperm
whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long-practised right
whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring warfare; such men
protesting that although other leviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to
chase
