 whaleman.
    Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing
that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped alive; it
cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further in
their superstitions; declaring Moby-Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for
immortality is but ubiquity in time); that though groves of spears should be
planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should
ever be made to spout thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly
deception; for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his
unsullied jet would once more be seen.
    But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough in the
earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike the
imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his uncommon bulk that
so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but, as was elsewhere thrown
out - a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and a high, pyramidical white
hump. These were his prominent features; the tokens whereby, even in the
limitless, uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at a long distance, to
those who knew him.
    The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with the same
shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive appellation of the
White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by his vivid aspect, when seen
gliding at high noon through a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy
foam, all spangled with golden gleamings.
    Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his
deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror, as that
unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had
over and over again evinced in his assaults. More than all, his treacherous
retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else. For, when swimming
before his exulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had
several times been known to turn round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them,
either stave their boats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to
their ship.
    Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar
disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the
fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal
aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused, was
not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent.
