 is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And
concerning all these, is not Possession the whole of the law?
    But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the kindred
doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is internationally and
universally applicable.
    What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the
Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What
was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at
last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.
    What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish?
What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of
religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling
verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe
itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a
Fast-Fish, too?
 

                                   Chapter XC

                                 Heads or Tails

 »De balena vero sufficit, si rex
 habeat caput, et regina caudam.«
                                                            Bracton, 1. 3, c. 3.
 
Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the context,
means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of that land, the
King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head, and the Queen be
respectfully presented with the tail. A division which, in the whale, is much
like halving an apple; there is no intermediate remainder. Now as this law,
under a modified form, is to this day in force in England; and as it offers in
various respects a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast and
Loose-Fish, it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous
principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a separate
car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in
curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is still in force, I
proceed to lay before you a circumstance that happened within the last two
years.
    It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one of the
Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and beaching a fine
whale which they had originally descried afar off from the shore. Now the Cinque
Ports are partially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or
beadle, called
