{"id":"01KJNXJQXGK3FDRS653REY0AQT","cid":"bafkreifjpqtc556ba57xuqzhzu3ndmq23cwfbmomnt2foeowafwdqjkspu","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":413713,"char_start":405995,"chunk_index":57,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1930,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"the secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged,\r\neven to the most erudite research; so the hidden ways of the Sperm\r\nWhale when beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable to\r\nhis pursuers; and from time to time have originated the most curious\r\nand contradictory speculations regarding them, especially concerning\r\nthe mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he\r\ntransports himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant\r\npoints.\r\n\r\nIt is a thing well known to both American and English whale-ships, and\r\nas well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby,\r\nthat some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific, in whose\r\nbodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland\r\nseas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has\r\nbeen declared that the interval of time between the two assaults could\r\nnot have exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference, it has been\r\nbelieved by some whalemen, that the Nor’ West Passage, so long a\r\nproblem to man, was never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the\r\nreal living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old\r\ntimes of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there\r\nwas said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the\r\nsurface); and that still more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain\r\nnear Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy\r\nLand by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost\r\nfully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.\r\n\r\nForced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and\r\nknowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had\r\nescaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen\r\nshould go still further in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not\r\nonly ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in\r\ntime); that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he\r\nwould still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to\r\nspout thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for\r\nagain in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his unsullied\r\njet would once more be seen.\r\n\r\nBut even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough in\r\nthe earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike\r\nthe imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his\r\nuncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales,\r\nbut, as was elsewhere thrown out—a peculiar snow-white wrinkled\r\nforehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent\r\nfeatures; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he\r\nrevealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.\r\n\r\nThe rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with the\r\nsame shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive\r\nappellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by\r\nhis vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue\r\nsea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden\r\ngleamings.\r\n\r\nNor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his\r\ndeformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural\r\nterror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to\r\nspecific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults.\r\nMore than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than\r\nperhaps aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers,\r\nwith every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known\r\nto turn round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their\r\nboats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.\r\n\r\nAlready several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar\r\ndisasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in\r\nthe fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale’s\r\ninfernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death\r\nthat he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an\r\nunintelligent agent.\r\n\r\nJudge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of\r\nhis more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed\r\nboats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the\r\nwhite curds of the whale’s direful wrath into the serene, exasperating\r\nsunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.\r\n\r\nHis three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the\r\neddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had\r\ndashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly\r\nseeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the\r\nwhale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping\r\nhis sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away\r\nAhab’s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk,\r\nno hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming\r\nmalice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that\r\nalmost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness\r\nagainst the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness\r\nhe at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but\r\nall his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam\r\nbefore him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious\r\nagencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left\r\nliving on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity\r\nwhich has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern\r\nChristians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of\r\nthe east reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and\r\nworship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the\r\nabhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All\r\nthat most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things;\r\nall truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the\r\nbrain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy\r\nAhab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby\r\nDick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general\r\nrage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if\r\nhis chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.\r\n\r\nIt is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at\r\nthe precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the\r\nmonster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,\r\ncorporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he\r\nprobably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.\r\nYet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long\r\nmonths of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in\r\none hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian\r\nCape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one\r\nanother; and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on\r\nthe homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania\r\nseized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at intervals\r\nduring the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a\r\nleg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was\r\nmoreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to\r\nlace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a\r\nstrait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKY9QG9G0KM51HSAJJNE1","peer_label":"whalemen","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"group_of_people","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:03.732Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKYC6Y313WBAV9JX8MQQS","peer_label":"nor west passage","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geographical_concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:03.732Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKYGCZNXREK07X11VQXHV","peer_label":"sperm whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_species","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:02:03.732Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKYBMKZMEDQTEGBC4PPTJ","peer_label":"greenland 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