Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale’s gastric juices.  But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a dead whale—­ even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them.  Besides, it has been divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a figure-head; and, I would add, possibly called “The Whale,” as some craft are nowadays christened the “Shark,” the “Gull,” the “Eagle.”  Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver—­an inflated bag of wind—­which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom.  Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round.  But he had still another reason for his want of faith.  It was this, if I remember right:  Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days’ he was vomited up somewhere within three days’ journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much more than three days’ journey across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast.  How is that?

But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within that short distance of Nineveh?  Yes.  He might have carried him round by the way of the Cape of Good Hope.  But not to speak of the passage through the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of the Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any whale to swim in.  Besides, this idea of Jonah’s weathering the Cape of Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor of the discovery of that great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and so make modern history a liar.

But all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his foolish pride of reason—­a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from the sun and the sea.  I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy.  For by a Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah’s going to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magnification of the general miracle.  And so it was.  Besides, to this day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah.  And some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris’s Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honor of Jonah, in which Mosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil.