既然我和魁魁格如今已切实投身于这捕鲸的行当；而此等营生不知怎的，在陆上人眼里竟成了毫无诗意且声名狼藉的勾当；因此，我满心焦切地要向你们这些陆上人证明，你们对吾等捕鲸者的不公。
首先，向大众确立这样一个事实，几乎可算多余：在世人眼中，捕鲸业根本不能与所谓自由职业相提并论。若一位生客被引荐进某处三教九流的都会社交场，即便介绍人说他是名标枪手，也绝难教在座之人对他青眼有加；而倘若他竟去效法海军军官，在名片上添印“S.W.F.（抹香鲸渔业）”的字样，这般行径定会被视作狂妄荒唐至极。
世人之所以不肯敬重吾等鲸船水手，一个主因无疑在于：他们以为吾辈营生说到底不过是宰割的买卖；且一旦躬身其中，便为诸般污秽所包围。屠夫，我们确是屠夫，此言不假。然而，那些血腥徽记最浓的屠夫，亦曾是世界向来乐于尊崇的万千兵马统帅。至于吾业所谓不洁的指责，不久你们便将知晓某些迄今鲜为人知的事实，而这些事实总体说来，足以叫抹香鲸船在这洁净的世上，至少跻身最清爽的事物之列。然则，即便承认此项指控属实，鲸船上那错乱湿滑的甲板，又岂能与那许多士兵归来博取贵妇喝彩的战场之难以名状的腐臭相比？若说危难之念令俗众愈觉军人职业崇高，则请容我相告：许多曾慷慨冲向炮列的老兵，见抹香鲸巨尾在头顶扇起涡流，定会仓皇退避。盖人所能解的恐怖，较之上帝交织的恐怖与神迹，又何足道哉！
虽世人轻蔑吾等猎鲸人，却在不觉间献上最深的崇敬；噫，乃至遍洒的膜拜！因环球所燃一切烛火、灯盏与蜡炬，皆如供于神龛之前，为吾辈之荣光而燃！
然则，且以别样眼光观此一事；以诸般秤星衡之；看吾等鲸夫是何样人，曾为何样人。
荷兰于德威特之时，何以遣舰队 Admiral 统辖捕鲸船队？法兰西路易十六何以自掏腰囊，自敦刻尔克备办捕鲸船，且礼邀吾辈南塔克特岛数十户人家移居该城？不列颠于一七五〇至一七八八年间，何以惠予捕鲸者赏金逾百万镑？末了，吾美洲鲸夫何以如今数目超越全球其余结伙鲸夫之总和；驶有舰船七百余艘；配员一万八千；岁耗四百万美元；启航时船值二千万美元！且每年运回港埠之丰获达七百万美元。若捕鲸中无某种伟力，何致如此？
然此犹未及其半；且再观之。
我坦然断言：六十年来，就整体广阔世界而论，寰宇哲学家穷其一生，亦不能指出任一和平之影响，较此崇高浩大的捕鲸业更具势能。它或以一途，或易他法，催生之事变自身已足称奇，其连锁之果又恒具紧要，故捕鲸实可视为埃及之母，所育子息皆自怀胎于其腹。欲尽列此类，必徒劳而无竟。聊举数端以明。多年来，鲸船乃探觅地球最遥僻未知之域的先锋。其勘海域与列岛，向无图籍，库克与温哥华亦未帆经。若今欧美战舰得安泊于昔蛮荒之港，当鸣炮礼敬鲸船之荣光——是它原辟其途，初通彼此与野人之语。汝等尽可颂汝库克、克鲁森施滕等探险英雄；然吾言：自南塔克特驶出之无名船长，其数盈十，其伟不下汝库克、克鲁森施滕。盖彼等手空无援，处异教鲨渊，傍无载之标岛之滨，与处子般的奇险相搏；而库克虽携海军火枪，亦未敢妄试。旧南海纪行中所夸者，于吾英雄南塔克特人，不过平生常事。温哥华费三章以述之遇，彼辈以为不值书于船中常志。嗟乎，世！噫，世！
鲸渔未绕合恩角之前，欧陆与太平洋岸富庶西班牙诸省长线之间，除殖民之贸，几无商；除殖民之往，几无交。首破西班牙王廷嫉户之政、及于诸殖民者，乃鲸夫；若篇幅允许，可明示：自彼鲸夫，终致秘鲁、智利、玻利维亚脱旧西班牙之轭，并于其地立永恒之民主。
彼球他侧之大美洲，澳大利亚，乃由鲸夫献于文明之世。自一荷人初误发现后，诸船久避其岸如疫蛮；独鲸船泊之。鲸船乃今此雄殖之真母。且澳初垦时，移民数濒饿殍，赖鲸船仁饼偶锚其水而活。玻里尼西亚无数未计之岛，咸认此理，且以商礼事鲸船——其辟道于传教士与商贾，多携初传教者抵其首岸。若那双闩之国日本终归好客，其功唯属鲸船；盖其已临阈矣。
然若面对此一切，汝仍言捕鲸无审美之贵缔，则吾备五十矛与汝决，每以裂盔坠汝于马下。
汝将言：鲸无名家为文，捕鲸无良史为志。
_鲸无名家为文，捕鲸无良史为志？_ 谁书吾利维坦之首记？非威者约伯而谁！谁撰捕鲸航之首叙？非亚尔弗雷德大王而谁——彼以王笔，录其时挪威猎鲸者奥瑟之言！谁于议会作吾等炽褒？非埃德蒙·伯克而谁！
诚然，然鲸夫自身乃穷鬼；脉中无贵血。
_脉中无贵血？_ 彼处有胜王血者。本杰明·富兰克林之祖母为玛丽·莫雷尔；嫁后称玛丽·福尔杰，乃南塔克特老殖者之一，亦累世福尔杰与标枪手之祖——皆贵胄本之亲族——今犹自地球一端投倒钩铁于他端。
善哉；然人皆认捕鲸不尊。
_捕鲸不尊？_ 捕鲸乃帝业！据古英格兰律，鲸称“王鱼”。*
哦，那徒具虚名！鲸自身从未以宏伟之姿现。
_鲸从未以宏伟之姿现？_ 罗马将军入世界之都所受一盛凯中，自叙利亚岸远运之鲸骨，乃铙钹行列中最显之物。*
*其后诸章对此尚有详及。
既汝引之，吾认；然任汝所言，捕鲸无真尊严。
_捕鲸无尊严？_ 吾业之尊严，天亦证之。鲸鱼乃南天一宿！止此！于沙皇前压帽，于魁魁格前脱帽！止此！吾识一人，生中取鲸三百五十。吾以此人较那夸取如许城垒的古代大将更荣。
至于我，若于任何可能中，我内里尚有未识之至要；若他日我堪得那小而肃寂、我或非无理奢望之界中实誉；若今后我行某事，统而观之，人宁为之而不愿不为；若我死时，吾之执行人——或更当称债权人——于案间得任何珍稿，则吾预以此一切荣光归捕鲸；盖鲸船乃吾之耶鲁与哈佛。
As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling;
and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among
landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I
am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby
done to us hunters of whales.
In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish
the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not
accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a
stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society,
it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were
he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation
of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale
Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed
pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us
whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a
butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we
are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is
true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been
all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And
as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye
shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally
unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm
whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But
even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered
slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable
carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to
drink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much
enhances the popular conceit of the soldier’s profession; let me assure
ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would
quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale’s vast tail,
fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the
comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and
wonders of God!
But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it
unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding
adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn
round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!
But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of
scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.
Why did the Dutch in De Witt’s time have admirals of their whaling
fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit
out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some
score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did
Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties
upwards of £1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of
America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world;
sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen
thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth,
at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our
harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if
there be not something puissant in whaling?
But this is not the half; look again.
I freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,
point out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty
years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken
in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way
and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so
continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may
well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves
pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to
catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past
the whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and
least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes
which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If
American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage
harbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the
whale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted
between them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the
heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I
say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket,
that were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern.
For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish
sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands,
battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines
and muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a
flourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the
life-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures
which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted
unworthy of being set down in the ship’s common log. Ah, the world! Oh,
the world!
Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,
scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe
and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific
coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy
of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted,
it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated
the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain,
and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was
given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first
blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned
those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched
there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.
Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the
emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent
biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.
The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do
commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the
missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive
missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land,
Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom
the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
æsthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to
shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet
every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you
will say.
_The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?_ Who
wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who
composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a
prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down
the words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And
who pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no
good blood in their veins.
_No good blood in their veins?_ They have something better than royal
blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;
afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of
Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and
harpooneers—all kith and kin to noble Benjamin—this day darting the
barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.
Good again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not
respectable.
_Whaling not respectable?_ Whaling is imperial! By old English
statutory law, the whale is declared “a royal fish.” *
Oh, that’s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any
grand imposing way.
_The whale never figured in any grand imposing way?_ In one of the
mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world’s
capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian
coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*
*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.
Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real
dignity in whaling.
_No dignity in whaling?_ The dignity of our calling the very heavens
attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your
hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I
know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty
whales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of
antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet
undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute
in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably
ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a
man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death,
my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in
my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory
to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
