Moby Dick

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     columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each
     of which districts are three lines; one to show the number
     of days that have been spent in each month in every
     district, and the two others to show the number of days in
     which whales, sperm or right, have been seen."

Besides, when making 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 they are called;
continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating
exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with
one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the
direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel,
and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own
unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary VEIN in which at these
times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width
(more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but