ولكن هذه العِزّة المستعلية المستقرة في جبهة حوت العنبر الكبير قد امتدت واتسعت، حتى إنك إذا حدقت فيها وأنت تواجه الرأس من أمام شعرت بالإله والقوى الجبارة هنالك بأكثر مما تشعر بها وأنت تنظر إلى أي شيء آخر في الطبيعة الحية. ذلك لأن نظرك لا يقع على شيء واحد إذ لا ينكشف له أي ملمح على حدة، فلستَ ترى أنفا أو عينين أو أذنين أو فما، لستَ ترى وجها، إذ ليس للحوت وجه محدد السمات، ليس إلا جلد عريض واحد يسمى جبهة، وقد غضّنتْهُ الألغاز، وكُتبت في أخاديده الصامتة مصائر القوارب والسفن والناس.
كذلك مِن المحجرين الذين كانت تحتلّهما عينا الحوت جحظتْ نفاختان ضريرتان، مَن رآهما قدّر أن الحوت يستحق الرثاء على نحو فظيع. ولكن لا رثاء ولا شفقة. رغم شيخوخته وأنه أقطع ذو ذراع واحدة، أعمى سملتْ عيناه، لا بد أن يعانق الموت وأن يُذبح لكي ينوّر ليالي الأعراس، وغيرها من أفراح الناس، ولكي يبعث الضياء في الكنائس المقدسة التي تبشّر بالتسامح والتراحم المطلق بين المخلوقات جميعا!
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and featest on their bloated livers in they pate-de-fois-gras.But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formerly indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phædon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed...
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
لقد فكَّ شمبليون معميات التجاعيد الفرعونية فوق جباه الجرانيت، ولكن أنّى لنا بشمبليون آخر كي يفك الأحرف الهيروغليفية في وجه كل إنسان وكل مخلوق؟ ما الفراسة إلا خرافة عابرة، كسائر علوم الإنسان. فإذا عجز السير وليم جونز - الذي كان يقرأ في ثلاثين لغة - عن قراءة أبسط وجه لريفي ساذج في معانيه العميقة المتوارية، فكم رجل مِن مثل إسماعيل الأميّ يرجو أن يقرأ الخطوط المسمارية الرهيبة على جبهة الحوت! إنني لأضع هذه الجبهة تحت أعينكم فاقرأوها إن قدرتم.
At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom - the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow.
It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood loosing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power that first moved it is withdrawn.
But the only thing to be considered here, is this - what kind of oil is used in coronations? Certainly it cannot be Olive Oil, or Maccasar Oil, nor Caster Oil, nor Bear's Oil, nor Train Oil, nor Cod-Liver Oil. What then can it possibly be but Sperm Oil in it's unmanufactured unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original— the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones—so goes the story— to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?
Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet!—that one strives, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith All thy unnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now.