Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.82

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.. < chapter lxxxii 24  THE HONOR AND GLORY OF WHALING >

     There are some
enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.  The more I
dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very
spring-head of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great
honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great
demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed
distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself
.. <p 360 >
belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.  The gallant
Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of
our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was
not killed with any sordid intent.  Those were the knightly days of our
profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill
men's lamp-feeders.  Every one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda;
how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the
sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off,
Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster,
and delivered and married the maid.  It was an admirable artistic exploit,
rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this
Leviathan was slain at the very first dart.  And let no man doubt this Arkite
story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of
the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale,
which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical
bones of the monster that Perseus slew.  When the Romans took Joppa, the same
skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph.  What seems most singular and
suggestively important in this story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah
set sail.  Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda --indeed, by some
supposed to be indirectly derived from it --is that famous story of St.  George
and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many
old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often
stand for each other.  Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of
the sea, saith ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some
versions of the Bible use that word itself.  Besides, it would much subtract
from the glory of the exploit had St.  George but encountered a crawling
reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the
deep.  Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St.  George, a Coffin,
have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.  Let not the modern
paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the creature encountered by
that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape,
and though
.. <p 361 >
the battle is depicted on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering
the great ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was
unknown to artists; and considering that as in Perseus' case, St.  George's
whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that
the animal ridden by St.  George might have been only a large seal, or
sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether
incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene,

     to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself.  In
fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will
fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name;
who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both the
palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him
remained.  Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the
tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket
should be enrolled in the most noble order of St.  George.  And therefore, let
not the knights of that honorable company (none of whom, I venture to say,
have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye
a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred
trowsers we are much better entitled to st.  george's decoration than they.
Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained
dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique
Crockett and Kit Carson --that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was
swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a
whaleman of him, that might be mooted.  It nowhere appears that he ever
actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from the inside.  Nevertheless,
he may be deemed a 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 demigod then, why not the prophet?
.. <p 362 >
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, 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 headwaters 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 Vishnoo, one of the three persons
in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our
Lord; --Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for
ever set apart and sanctified the whale.  When Brahma, or the God of Gods,
saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its
periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work;

     but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been
indispensable to Vishnoo 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 Vishnoo
became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost
depths, rescued the sacred volumes.  Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then?
even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?  Perseus, St.  George,
Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo!  there's a member-roll for you!  What club but
the whaleman's can head off like that?
.. <p 362 >