 spheres were formed in fright.
    But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned
why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more
portentous - why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of
spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be
as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.
    Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and
immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of
annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the Milky Way? Or is it, that
as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of
colour, and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these
reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide
landscape of snows - a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink?
And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all
other earthly hues - every stately or lovely emblazoning - the sweet tinges of
sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the
butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits, not actually
inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified
Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but
the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the
mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of
light, forever remains white or colourless in itself, and if operating without
medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own
blank tinge - pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper;
and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring
glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the
monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these
things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
 

                                 Chapter XLIII

                                     Hark!

»Hist! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?«
    It was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a
cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the
scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill
the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on
