 bodily eyes, when what seemed
Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless
somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object
to colour, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy
thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus
makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; that vulture
the very creature he creates.
 

                                  Chapter XLV

                                 The Affidavit

So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as
indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the
habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as
important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it
requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be
adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a
profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the
natural verity of the main points of this affair.
    I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be
content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items,
practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from these citations, I
take it, the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.
    First: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after
receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval (in
one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain;
when the two irons, both marked by the same private cipher, have been taken from
the body. In the instance where three years intervened between the flinging of
the two harpoons; and I think it may have been something more than that; the man
who darted them happening, in the interval, to go in a trading-ship on a voyage
to Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated far into
the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly two years, often
endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other
common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions. Meanwhile,
the whale he had struck must also have been on its travels; no doubt it had
thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its flanks all the coasts of
Africa; but to no purpose. This man and this whale again came together, and the
one vanquished the other. I
