Moby Dick

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CHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho's Story.


(AS TOLD AT THE GOLDEN INN)


The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is
much like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet
more travellers than in any other part.

It was not very long after speaking the Goney that another
homeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned
almost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave
us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White
Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's
story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain
wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God