The Chart
Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squallthat took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification ofhis purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker inthe transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish seacharts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seatinghimself before it, you would have seen him intently study thevarious lines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slowbut steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that beforewere blank. At intervals, he would refer to piles of old log-booksbeside him, wherein were set down the seasons and places in which,on various former voyages of various ships, sperm whales had beencaptured or seen.
While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chainsover his head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and forever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkledbrow, till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking outlines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil wasalso tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of hisforehead.
But it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of hiscabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night theywere brought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced,and others were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceansbefore him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with aview to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thoughtof his soul.
Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of theleviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek outone solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But notso did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents;and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's food;and, also calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for huntinghim in particular latitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises,almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day tobe upon this or that ground in search of his prey.
So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of thesperm whale's resorting to given waters, that many hunters believethat, could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world;were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefullycollated, then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found tocorrespond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or theflights of swallows. On this hint, attempts have been made toconstruct elaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.**Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne outby an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the NationalObservatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, itappears that precisely such a chart is in course of completion; andportions of it are presented in the circular. "This chart dividesthe ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five degreesof longitude; perpendicularly through each of which districts aretwelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each ofwhich districts are three lines; one to show the number of days thathave been spent in each month in every district, and the two others toshow the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have beenseen."
Besides, when ****** a passage from one feeding-ground to another,the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct- say, rather,secret intelligence from the Deity- mostly swim in veins, as theyare called; continuing their way along a given ocean-line with suchundeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by anychart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in thesecases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as asurveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be strictlyconfined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary veinin which at these times he is said to swim, generally embraces somefew miles in width (more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand orcontract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship'smast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. Thesum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and alongthat path, migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for.
And hence not only at substantiated times, upon well knownseparate feeding-grounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey; butin crossing the widest expanses of water between those grounds hecould, by his art, so place and time himself on his way, as eventhen not to be wholly without prospect of a meeting.
There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle hisdelirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality,perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasonsfor particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that theherds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year,say, will turn out to be identically the same with those that werefound there the preceding season; though there are peculiar andunquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true.
