en isolated instances of the presence of the
sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that
on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found
the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes
through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route,
pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.

In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance
called BRIT is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I have
every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale--squid or
cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures,
but by no means the largest of that sort, have been found at its
surface. If, then, you properly put these statements together, and
reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according to all
human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a century stove
the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm
whale.

CHAPTER 46. Surmises.

Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his
thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick;
though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that one
passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and long
habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways, altogether to
abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if
this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more
influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even
considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the
White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all
sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he
multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would
prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed
exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though
not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet
were by no means incapable of swaying him.

To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in
the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew,
for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was
over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual
man any more than mere corporeal superiorit