ken from the unbidden and unfathered birth.
Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of 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 for ever; that vulture the very creature
he creates.

CHAPTER 45. 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 cypher, 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 co