Moby Dick

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which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance,
with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the
secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears
of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the story was
unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the private
property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it
seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secrecy,
but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed
so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well
withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing
have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of
it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in
this matter, that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never
transpired abaft the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper
place this darker thread with the story as publicly narrated on the
ship, the whole of this strange affair I now proceed to put on lasting
record.