HORATIO. Peace, who comes here?
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Moby-Dick — Chapter 63: Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True
CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
The shouting host in loud applauses join’d; So Pallas robb’d the many of their mind; To their own sense condemn’d, and left to choose The worst advice, the better to refuse.
“I will try to be there, Harry,” he said, leaving the room. As he drove back to his own house, he was conscious that the sense of terror he thought he had strangled had come back to him. Lord Henry’s casual questioning had made him lose his nerve for the moment, and he wanted his nerve still. Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced. He hated the idea of even touching them.
“‘Marquis,’ said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and his right hand raised, ‘in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do it.’
HAMLET. It will be short. The interim is mine; And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘One’. But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself; For by the image of my cause I see The portraiture of his. I’ll court his favours. But sure the bravery of his grief did put me Into a tow’ring passion.
[12] [ The reader will note the extreme care which the writer takes to make it clear that none of the suitors were allowed to sleep in Ulysses’ house.]
“Good day!” answered Defarge, drily.
“He’s too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know’st what to say.”
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.
Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantel-piece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth’s feelings dreadful. At length, in a voice of forced calmness, he said,--
“Return! (said Hector, fired with stern disdain) What! coop whole armies in our walls again? Was’t not enough, ye valiant warriors, say, Nine years imprison’d in those towers ye lay? Wide o’er the world was Ilion famed of old For brass exhaustless, and for mines of gold: But while inglorious in her walls we stay’d, Sunk were her treasures, and her stores decay’d; The Phrygians now her scatter’d spoils enjoy, And proud Mæonia wastes the fruits of Troy. Great Jove at length my arms to conquest calls, And shuts the Grecians in their wooden walls, Darest thou dispirit whom the gods incite? Flies any Trojan? I shall stop his flight. To better counsel then attention lend; Take due refreshment, and the watch attend. If there be one whose riches cost him care, Forth let him bring them for the troops to share; ’Tis better generously bestow’d on those, Than left the plunder of our country’s foes. Soon as the morn the purple orient warms, Fierce on yon navy will we pour our arms. If great Achilles rise in all his might, His be the danger: I shall stand the fight. Honour, ye gods! or let me gain or give; And live he glorious, whosoe’er shall live! Mars is our common lord, alike to all; And oft the victor triumphs, but to fall.”
“I did so, raising the boy’s head against my knee. But, invested for the moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely: obliging me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him.
“All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you to-morrow at tea-time. The duchess is coming.”
“It is all the same,” said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: “good day!”
[11] [ μέγαρα σκιοέντα The whole open court with the covered cloister running round it was called μέγαρον, or μέγαρα, but the covered part was distinguished by being called “shady” or “shadow-giving”. It was in this part that the tables for the suitors were laid. The Fountain Court at Hampton Court may serve as an illustration (save as regards the use of arches instead of wooden supports and rafters) and the arrangement is still common in Sicily. The usual translation “shadowy” or “dusky” halls, gives a false idea of the scene.]
HORATIO. It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there.
“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot--I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which you tell me have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.”
But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham’s skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy’s other leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan’s articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering. “However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us,” said humorous Stubb one day, “he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens.”