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1Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that took place on the night succeeding that wild
2ratification of his purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom, and bringing out a
3large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating himself
4before it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow
5but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he would refer to piles of
6old log-books beside him, wherein were set down the seasons and places in which, on various former voyages of various
7ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen. While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his
8head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his
9wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts,
10some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead. But it was not
11this night in particular that, in the solitude of his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they
12were brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and others were substituted. For with the charts of
13all four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain
14accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul. Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the
15leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of
16this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating the
17driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in
18particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest
19day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey. So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness
20of the sperm whale's resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe that, could he be closely observed and studied
21throughout the world; were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully collated, then the migrations of
22the sperm whale would be found to correspond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of swallows.
23On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale. *Since the above was
24written, the statement is happily borne out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National
25Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that precisely such a chart is in course of
26completion; and portions of it are presented in the circular. "This chart divides the ocean into districts of five
27degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude; perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve columns for
28the twelve months; and horizontally through each of which districts are three lines; one to show the number of days that
29have been spent in each month in every district, and the two others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or
30right, have been seen." Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the sperm whales, guided by
31some infallible instinct--say, rather, secret intelligence from the Deity--mostly swim in veins, as they are called;
32continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by
33any chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be
34straight as a surveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable, straight
35wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width
36(more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship's
37mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth
38and along that path, migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for. And hence not only at substantiated
39times, upon well known separate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing the widest
40expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to
41be wholly without prospect of a meeting. There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his delirious
42but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular
43seasons for particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which haunted such and such a latitude
44or longitude this year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were found there the preceding
45season; though there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In general,
46the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm
47whales. So that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in
48the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of
49those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some other
50feeding grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed only his casual stopping-places and
51ocean-inns, so to speak, not his places of prolonged abode. And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his object have
52hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to whatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a
53particular set time or place were attained, when all possibilities would become probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly
54thought, every possibility the next thing to a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined in the one
55technical phrase--the Season-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several consecutive years, Moby Dick had been
56periodically descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted
57interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had
58taken place; there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man
59had found the awful motive to his vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which
60Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one
61crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could
62he so tranquillize his unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest. Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at
63the very beginning of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander to make the great
64passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific
65in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the premature hour of the Pequod's
66sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things. Because, an
67interval of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead of impatiently
68enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far
69remote from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay,
70or China Seas, or in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor'-Westers, Harmattans, Trades;
71any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's
72circumnavigating wake.
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