sort of
involuntary whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale.
I claim him for one of our clan.
    But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of Hercules
and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more ancient Hebrew
story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly they are very similar.
If I claim the demi-god then, why not the prophet?
    Nor do heroes, saints, demi-gods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll
of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old
times, we find the head-waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great
gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the
Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnu, one of the three persons in the
godhead of the Hindus; gives us this divine Vishnu himself for our Lord; -
Vishnu, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has forever set apart
and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster,
resolved to re-create the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he
gave birth to Vishnu, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical
books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnu before
beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the
shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the
bottom of the waters; so Vishnu became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down
in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnu
a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?
    Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnu! there 's a member-roll for
you? What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?
 

                                Chapter LXXXIII

                          Jonah Historically Regarded

Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the
preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story
of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans,
who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the
story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their
doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts,
for all that.
    One old Sag Harbour whaleman's chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story
was this: - He had one of those quaint old-