Moby Dick

[Old Thunder]

Thus goes the legend.

 

[Old Thunder]

In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons.

 

[Old Thunder]

With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters.

 

[Old Thunder]

They resolved to follow in the same direction.

 

[Old Thunder]

Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,--the poor little Indian's skeleton.

 

[Old Thunder]

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood!

 

[Old Thunder]

They first caught crabs and quohogs* in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigation round it; peeped in at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous!

*Type of clam.

 

[Old Thunder]

That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

 

[Old Thunder]

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea-hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders;* parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers** did Poland.

*Alexander the Great, conqueror of a vast empire in the fourth century B.C.
**Prussia, Russia, and Austria took over parts of Poland in partitions of 172, 1793, and 1795, eventually completely eliminating it.

 

[Old Thunder]

Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's.