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.

CHAPTER 25

Postscript

In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but substantiated facts.  But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause—­such an advocate, would he not be blame-worthy?

It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through.  There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a caster of state.  How they use the salt, precisely—­who knows?  Certain I am, however, that a king’s head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad.  Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery?  Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing.  In truth, a mature man who uses hairoil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere.  As a general rule, he can’t amount to much in his totality.

But the only thing to be considered here is this—­what kind of oil is used at coronations?  Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear’s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil.  What then can it possibly be, but the sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?

Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!

CHAPTER 26

Knights and Squires

The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent.  He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit.  Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled ale.  He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous.  Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers had dried up all his physical superfluousness.  But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more